Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater

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Marc Chagall and the Je>vish Theater

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Marc Chagall and the Jevs^ish Theater

Marc Chagall and the JevN^ish Theater

Reproductions of cat. nos. 1-7 The Art Institute of Chicago

ISBN: 0-89207-099-4 This exhibition has been sponsored, in part, by Published by the Guggenheim Museum Lufthansa German Airlines. 1071 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10128 Lufthansa

Prmted m the United States by Thorner Press Additional support has been provided by Front cover: The Helena Rubinstein Foundation. Marc Chagall, M/isk, 1920 Tempera and gouache on canvas 212.4 ^ I03-5 cm (83 V« X 40 V4 inches) State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow

Back cover: Marc Chagall, Loi'e on the Stage. 1920 Tempera and gouache on canvas

284.2 X 249.6 cm (in 7s x 98 'A inches) State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow

Frontispiece: Emblem of the Jewish Chamber Theater, taken from a 1919 poster printed in Petrograd.

Color photography: Cat. nos. 1-7, from State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow; nos. I, 2 photo H. Preisig; no. 3 courtesy Fondation Pierre Gianadda; nos. 4-7 photographed by Lee

Ewing. Cat. nos. 8, 9, 11, 14, from Musee national d'art moderne. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; photo Philippe Migeat, © Centre G. Pompidou. Cat. nos. 10,

12, 13, 15-20, from the collection of Ida Chagall, Paris. Cat. nos. 21—32, from Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; no. 24 photographed by Myles Aronowitz;

no. 29 by Lee Ewing; nos. 21, 31, 32 by Carmelo Guadagno; nos. 21-23, 2.5—28, 30 by David Heald.

Marc Chagall and theJewish Theater Contents

Preface Thomas Krens

viii

Fore>vord h/rii K. Korolev X

Sponsor's Statement jiirgm Weber

Introduction Jeiuujer Bleising

xii

Chagall's Auditorium: "An Identity Crisis of Tragic Dimensions'

S/i.saii C ODiptoii

Chagall: Postmodernism and Fictional Worlds in Painting Benjamin Harshav

Catalogue to the Exhibition 65

Texts and Documents Edited by Benjamin Harshav Translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav

133

Bibliography Benjamin Harshav 200

Aftervs^ord Gregory Veitsman 205 Alan- Chagall and theJewish Theater appears at the Gu^'genheim Culture of the Russian Federation, was vital to the success of Museum SoHo while The Great Utopia: The R/issian and Soviet the project. Avant-Garde, ipi$-ip^2, the comprehensive exhibition of one of A number of collectors and institutions were extremely

the principal Modernist movements of the twentieth century, is generous in agreeing to lend us important works with the short on display at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The Great notice that resulted from our scheduling requirements. Utopia presents the fruits ot the avant-garde's attempt to Madame Ida Chagall, daughter of the artist, selflessly lent nine restructure an entire society — economically, socially, and sketches from her collection. Our exhibition would be culturally — in the face of a tremendous political upheaval, the incomplete without these essential works related to the Russian Revolution. Artists became integral participants in commission for the Jewish Theater. We must also thank Meret the formation ol the Soviet government. They also strove to Meyer, Ida Chagall's daughter, for facilitating the transmission create new forms for art and utilitarian objects that would of photographs. The contribution of Franz Meyer, the author of function purposefully to bring about and encourage change. the artist's first catalogue raisonne, was indispensable to the Stranded in Russia during a visit with his fiancee before World exhibition.

War I, Marc Chagall participated in revolutionary debates The Musee national dart moderne. Centre Georges about art and politics. He was appointed the Commissar of Art Pompidou, Paris lent additional theater drawings, including for the region of Vitebsk and founded an art academy and the preparatory sketch for the Guggenheim's Green Violinist. museum in his official capacity. At the academy, Chagall's We offer our special thanks to Dominique Bozo, President of teachings were challenged by Kazimir Malevich, who the Centre Georges Pompidou, and Germain Viatte, the Musee succeeded in convincing the school's students of the primacy of national d'art moderne's Director. Additional assistance was

his Suprematism. The Great Utopia serves as an excellent offered by Curator Didier Schulmann, who is compiling the background for Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater by Chagall catalogue raisonne for the museum, and Collection providing the context within which Chagall, in 1920, Registrar Viviane Faret, who helped us navigate the loan undertook his commission for the State Jewish Chamber procedures for the popular works. Theater. Marc Chagall and theJewish Theater, in turn, can be The State Bakhrushin Museum, Moscow, under the viewed as a counterpoint to The Great Utopia in that it presents direction of Valerii Gubin, lent four sketches by Chagall's the work of an artist whose methods of representation, contemporaries who designed productions for the Jewish enigmatic symbolism, and abstract individualist ideology left Theater. We have been the beneficiaries of this museum's him at odds with many of his fellow artists and hastened his profound contribution to the preservation and restoration of departure from Russia. theatrical objects from the early Soviet period, including an These exhibitions have been both blessed and plagued by extensive archive of documentary material. The Central State the myriad changes in the former Soviet Union. The opening Archive for Literature and Art, Moscow, directed by Natal'ia of previously restricted archives and the willingness to Volkova, generously lent rare 1920s posters for the theater, cooperate with Western scholars and institutions have led to a among them an important broadsheet believed to be the first wealth of new studies on the pre- and postrevolutionary poster mentioning Chagall. periods and to exhibitions of works that may not have been In 1991, the murals were exhibited en suite for the first time removed from storage in the Soviet Union, much less been lent in the West, at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny, to museums in other countries. An exhibition of Chagall's Switzerland, which sponsored their restoration. We must thank murals for the Jewish Theater was unthinkable a few short the foundation's President Leonard Gianadda as well as years ago. The rapidity of change in the Russian political Christoph Vitali, Director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. situation in recent years created unique logistical and technical Their institutions' exhibitions and catalogues provided both difficulties that had to be overcome. Without the dedicated inspiration and substantial new material on Chagall's murals. commitment of our Russian partners, as well as of many Mr. Vitali lent the Guggenheim numerous historical individuals and institutions in Europe and the United States, photographs and provided important technical advice. this show would not be possible. Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater might never have been We are most indebted to lurii Korolev, Director of the State realized without the assistance of Lufthansa German Airlines

Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow, and his staff Among them, Lidiia and its Chairman, Jiargen Weber. Nicolas V. Iljine, Manager of Romashkova, Chief Registrar and Deputy Director, played a Public Affairs, arranged and coordinated extensive key role. The Tret'iakov Gallery has cared for Chagall's seven transportation services, and his enthusiastic interest murals for the Jewish Theater since 1950, when they were throughout the show's development was a continuously admitted to the museum. These paintings would not be on important source of encouragement. Through his capable display today without the meticulous restoration work led by offices we were able to obtain much of the documentary

Aleksei Kovalev, Director of the Restoration Department, and material that is the basis of the informational component of the his team, including Leonid Astafev and Galina lushkevich. exhibition. Additional support was provided by the Helena The participation of Evgenii Sidorov, the Minister of Rubinstein Foundation, for which we are grateful.

Thomas Krem Preface and Acknov\^ledgments

Valentin Rivkind, Deputy Director ot the Vuchetich All- to the success of this project. Despite numerous other Union Artistic Production Association (VUART), Moscow, was obligations, Mr. Calnek, Laura Morris, Assistant Editor, and instrumental in securing all loans of art from Russia, a very Jennifer Knox, Editorial Assistant, responded to their labors complicated task due to the volatile political and economic with fortitude and good spirits. situation. The assistance and enthusiasm of Zel'fira Tregulova, Paul Schwartzbaum, Assistant Director for Technical art expert and Deputy Chief of the exhibition department at Services and Chief Conservator, was involved in the exhibition VUART, was fundamental to the realization of this project. She from its inception. His expertise in overseeing the care of the was a model of efficiency and grace under pressure. murals and in negotiating technical issues has been Marc Chagall 6jnd the Jewish Theater has profited from the indispensable. Jan Adlmann, Director of Special Programs, initiatives taken by Russian scholars. Aleksandra Shatskikh's organized the symposium Two Lectures/New Insights: Marc extensive research into the life and work of Chagall is amply Chagall's Jewish Theater Project in conjunction with the 92nd demonstrated by her contributions to the Schirn Kunsthalle Street Y Among the many other staff members who made Frankfurt's catalogue. Our knowledge of the commission for contributions were Lynne Addison, Associate Registrar, who the Jewish Theater has been greatly enriched by her work. We handily took over the responsibilities of the exhibition are also grateful to Zara Abdulaeva for her research on the midstream after joining the museum, and Heidi Rosenau, the Jewish Theater, which we relied upon for the production Public Affairs Coordinator responsible for the Chagall history presented in the exhibition. exhibition, who discharged her duties with intelligence and Christiane Bauermeister of Ost-West-Kultur facilitated grace. communication between various parties in Russia and New Finally, we owe our thanks to this catalogue's contributors, York. In Moscow, we benefited from the participation of Rada who committed themselves to the project despite our short Abdulaeva, Liubov' Chistiakova, Irina Duksina, Matvei Geizer, deadlines. Dr. Susan Compton, the eminent Chagall specialist,

Natal'ia lakimova, Boris Karad'ev, Tat'iana Klim, Elena and Dr. Benjamin Harshav, J. and H. Blaustein Professor of Korenevskaia, Alia Lukanova, Rada Mamedova, Vjatscheslaw Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Yale University, have

Nechaev, Anait Oganessian, Igor Pal'min, Il'ia Plotkin, made immeasurable contributions to Chagall scholarship. Ekaterina Seleznova, Mikhail Shvydkoi, and Boris Zingerman. Barbara Harshav translated, with Dr. Harshav, the extensive We also received help from Aleksei Bessobrasov, St. selection of primary texts included herein. Gregory Veitsman, Petersburg; Natan Fedorowskii, Berlin; David Hasan, former Assistant Director for Technical Services at the State Helsinki; Sam Norich, New York; and Elena Rakitin, Tret'iakov Gallery, shares his recollections of Chagall in the Frankfurt. afterword. The dedication of and sheer hard work by Guggenheim staff members made this exhibition possible. In spring 1992, a —Thomas Krens team was created to bring the exhibition to fruition, which Director, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation included Michael Govan, Deputy Director, and Maryann Jordan, Director of External Affairs, who quickly began to mobilize the museum's resources. Jennifer Blessing, Assistant Curator for Research, spearheaded the curatorial organization of the exhibition. She was ably assisted by Emily Locker, Project Research Assistant, whose Russian-language skills and meticulous attention to detail were a tremendous asset. At crucial moments. Carmen Gimenez, Curator of Twentieth-Century Art, participated in loan negotiations; and Jane Sharp, Project Associate Curator for The Great Utopia, lent her expertise to the Chagall show when needed. Sharon Corwin, Curatorial Intern, solved numerous problems of logistics during her short summer tenure.

The Technical Services staff, headed by Pamela Myers, Administrator for Exhibitions and Programming, took on the task of designing, planning, and mounting this exhibition in six short months. Peter Costa, Senior Museum Technician, was key to its installation. Andrew Law Simons, associate designer, designed the didactic component of the exhibition; he also designed the the catalogue based on a format by Massimo Vignelli. The commitment of the Publications Department, led by Anthony Calnek, Managing Editor, was no less essential

Preface and Acknowhdgimnti 1 ix ForevN^ord

The monumental murals Marc Chagall created in 1920 for the most distant place on the tour.

State Jewish Chamber Theater in Moscow (GOSEKT) were the I wish to express my profound thanks to my colleague last works the master made in his native land. His artistic Thomas Krens, the Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim achievement was immediately recognized by critics and art Foundation, and Deputy Director Michael Govan for bringing

scholars. Therefore, after the theater was closed in 1949, it was the exhibition Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater to the no accident that the State Tret'iakov Gallery, the country's United States. leading museum, acquired the panels for their permanent I would especially like to thank Nicolas V. Iljine, Manager collection. There, cared for by restorers and curators, the of Public Affairs of Lufthansa German Airlines, for his murals were kept on drums because of their large size. They enormous interest in the exhibition and the energy he devoted were unrolled to check for damage on a regular but infrequent toward it. I hope all visitors to the exhibition will enjoy their basis because of the fragility of their backing and paint layers. encounter with Chagall's legendary panels, the only great When the artist visited the Tret'iakov Gallery in 1973, he was works of a monumental scale the artist created in Russia, delighted by the careful treatment the murals had received, which, the critics of the 1920s agreed, were his best works. and he signed and dated them at that time. Until perhaps the late 1960s, he had not even known that the works had survived. —lurii K. Korolev During the many years the murals were in storage our General Director experts could only undertake measures to protect the panels. State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow There was no possibility of restoration, and there was nowhere large enough to display them in the museum's old exhibition galleries. When the museum underwent major reconstruction and plans were made to expand exhibition space, the question of displaying kinds of paintings never shown before arose. We wrestled with the difficulties of restoring and exhibiting such works as Chagall's theater panels and Vrubel's panel Priucess Gnzci. The singular history of Chagall's murals — including their creation in the extreme conditions of postrevolutionary Russia, the nature of their materials (tempera and gouache on thin linen), their subsequent fate determined by dramatic twists and turns such as the theater's move from Bol'shoi

Chernyshevskii Lane to Malaia Bronnaia Street, and the far- from-ideal storage conditions from 1938 through the war — was reflected in their appearance. The restorers had to deal with wrinkling of the backing, weak threads holding the damaged parts of the linen together, scratches, and large areas where the paint was missing or flaking. They also had to reinforce Chagall's canvas. This extremely complicated work was carried out by the Tret'iakov Gallery's restorers, Aleksei Kovalev (the director of the department, who developed a unique method for treating the murals), Leonid Astaf ev, and Galina lushkevich. The obstacle of the cost of such a complicated restoration project was overcome by means of international collaboration.

It was decided that the murals would be exhibited in various countries throughout the world until the reconstruction of the museum was complete. The high quality of the restoration, which won a prize in Ferrara in 1991, enabled an extensive exhibition tour. The paintings were first shown in Switzerland, at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, which financed the restoration. The exhibition then traveled to the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow, and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. In all of these exhibitions, which proved to be very successful, the murals were shown in the context of Chagall's Russian period. Now the murals have reached North America and New York, the

Foreword Sponsor'is Statement

The legendary, monumental murals Chagall created in 1920 for the auditorium of Moscow's State Jewish Chamber Theater are, as the artist himself described them, his most important works of art. They express many of the major influences that formed the artist's life and work, fusing into perfect harmony his Jewish and Russian background and traditions with European Modern art trends. Like no other artist ol his time, Chagall was able to combine traditional themes with Modern painting in a very special and symbolic form of expression. He thus created an ensemble that contains its own message for and language of the different cultures. The masterpieces were exhibited in 1991 in Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle. We are now especially proud to enable their first showing in America. For Lufthansa, our traditional commitment to cultural

understanding and artistic expression is evidenced in our support of this extraordinary exhibition. Our association with great art and great artists provides better communication across different cultures, frontiers, and geographic boundaries.

It is, after all, what Lufthansa is all about — linking people with people throughout the world. This exhibition in particular honors an artist who coined

what is perhaps the most beautiful phrase ever written about

art: "Paint is the lifeblood of the artist."

—Jiirgen Weber Chairman of the Executive Board Lufthansa German Airlines Lufthansa

sponsor's Statement In November 1920, the State Jewish Chamber Theater moved By his own account, Chagall was determined to create a visual into a residence in Moscow provided by the Soviet government. manifesto for the Jewish Theater in this commission.' Foiled in Adjoining rooms on the second floor of the house, which had earlier attempts to design theatrical productions, he saw this as

belonged to a wealthy merchant, L. I. Gurevich, before an opportunity to assert his beliefs about a new direction for apparently being confiscated during the Revolution, were the theater (and perhaps also for art and revolution). At the converted into a small auditorium capable of seating 90 people Jewish Theater, Chagall found himself among a group of young on benches.' Marc Chagall, who was by then known people who were trying to define the nature of their company. internationally, was hired to design the sets and costumes for The events of 1917 had provided a tabula rasa for the Jewish the troupe's inaugural production of three one-act plays by Theater, upon which Chagall could inscribe his own codes.

Sholem Aleichem, which opened on January i, 1921. In the last That Chagall perceived himself as a kind of Moses giving the few weeks of 1920, in the midst of civil war and famine, the law to the Israelites is clear in his grand statement, the nearly artist produced an ensemble of paintings for the theater's three twenty-six-foot-long mural Introduction to the Jewish Theater walls, the stage curtain, and the ceiling, creating an (1920, cat. no. i), in which he painted himself being carried by environment for the production that extended beyond the Abram Efros, the theater critic who suggested him for the stage. The small hall became known as Chagall's Box.' Its commission, to Aleksei Granovskii, the theater's director. The surviving seven paintings (the curtain and ceiling canvases two tablets of the Ten Commandments appear behind the were lost) form the core of the Guggenheim's exhibition. artist's head.

Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater is designed to present Through a natural outgrowth of his painterly vocabulary, these murals within a framework that illuminates the Chagall presented a kaleidoscopic panoply of ecstatic figures in circumstances of their creation, from Chagall's artistic process this work, which suggested an anti-rational model of and aesthetic decisions to the conditions under which he carnivalesque abandon for the theater. This conceptualization worked. To that end, the exhibition is divided into two of theater was not entirely new; Russian directors such as components; the first, its nucleus, consists of the murals and Vsevolod Meierkhol'd and Aleksandr Tairov were exploring the related art works by Chagall. Included are studies for the legacy of commedia dell'arte and other popular theatrical paintings, which demonstrate the artist's working methods and spectacles before Chagall began work on the murals." techniques, as well as his set and costume sketches for the Granovskii was already disposed to that kind of dramatic Sholem Aleichem Evening. Also on display are works by the artist treatment through his studies under Max Reinhardt, the in the Guggenheim's collection, ranging from the early Portrait progressive Austrian director. Yet Chagall presented a unique, of the Artist's Sister Aniuta (1910, cat. no. 21), painted before and uniquely Jewish, approach. Through specifically Jewish Chagall made his pivotal trip to Paris; to masterpieces of his visual puns, Yiddish inscriptions, and references to the first Parisian period, such as Paris Through the Window (1913, festivities of Jewish weddings and Purim — a Jewish analogue cat. no. 23); to important reprises of earlier canvases, including to carnival in its emphasis on ludicrous masquerades and Green Violinist (1923-24, cat. no. 30). Chagall created the latter outrageous intoxication — he posited a distinctive model for painting, a virtual replica of the Jewish Theater's Music (1920, the Jewish Theater.' cat. no. 4), in Paris from a sketch he had brought with him This model was not without political implications. In a from Moscow, probably the drawing in the exhibition on loan 1940 paper, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), a Russian literary from the Musee national d'art moderne. Centre Georges scholar who was Chagall's contemporary, described carnival as a Pompidou, Paris {The Green Violinist {study for Alz/j/V], 1920, populist, Utopian conception of the world.** He found a critique cat. no. 11).' Chagall frequently re-created images that he had of established power in its flouting of conventional behavior painted years before, as if to have souvenirs of works that were and established norms and in its inversion of standard lost to him. This exhibition unites the various versions of the hierarchies. Although Bakhtin studied the Renaissance world fiddler for the first time.^ of Rabelais, many of his observations about the dialectical

The second component of the exhibition is a presentation of representation of human form — the "classical " versus the documentary material concerning the Jewish Theater and the "grotesque" body — can be applied to Chagall's work in Chagall commission. Historical photographs, sketches, and general, and his murals in particular. The classical body is the posters — some unpublished and previously unknown in the idealized, regularly proportioned, and decorously realistic West — and explanatory text panels indicate the period and figure, while the grotesque body, the body of carnival, is a atmosphere in which the murals were created. One section is lewdly comic explosion of ill-proportioned parts. Grotesque devoted to the history of the Jewish Theater from its founding realism, in its emphasis on the debased aspects of the human in 1918 through 1928. Other segments provide background figure, challenges the authority of the normative, or bourgeois information on Chagall's activities during his second and final standard. Carnival, along with its elements of feasting, Russian period, from 1914 to 1922, on the original installation dancing, parody, and raucous laughter, embraces the grotesque, of the murals, and on the history of the paintings after their and as such resists the principles of the dominant culture. creation. Carnivalesque merrymaking and grotesquerie are

Jennifer Blessing I Introduction

predominant in Introduction to tha Jewish Theater. Non- If these lovers are a bride and groom, they are linked to naturalistic figures abound: men with rubbery legs twisted like the wedding performers depicted in the theater paintings of pretzels, violinists with heads hovering over their bodies, and the Arts and to The Wedding Table.'' The wedding, ubiquitous acrobats walking on their hands. Quizzical, off-color vignettes, in Yiddish drama, is a festive celebration of a new beginning, such as a man pissing on a pig, a boy's circumcision, and a man and as such bears potential political implications akin to those with a boot in his mouth, appear amidst the festive revelers. of the Purim-carnival. Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels, the The other paintings in the theater ensemble sustain the jocular Jewish Theater's star and Chagall's dear friend, indicated the tone. Four paintings representing the Arts of Music, Dance, significance of the wedding in his remarks about a production Drama, and Literature were hung on the wall opposite he directed in 1945: Introduction. Above them was a frieze, The Wedding Table (1920, cat. no. 3), depicting a whimsical feast. All of these works have Our task is to show that you cannot destroy a people. No matter how been connected to the festivities of Jewish weddings, and all we may bleed, we will go on as a people, and we will continue to

teem with colorful, humorous details.' celebrate weddings and give birth to children. . . . A wedding is the

The murals take on added significance when viewed within bond of life and bearing children, the beginning of a new life.'" the context of the Russian Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Chagall's riotous tumult of figures and hues, a Four years after he made this statement, Mikhoels was

Jewish harlequinade, is more than a playful fantasy; it asserts murdered by order of Joseph Stalin, escalating the repression of the priority of a specific ethnic culture against the hegemony of the Jewish Theater that had begun in the late 1920s, when all Russian society, from which the artist had been institutionally avant-garde theater was scrutinized by the Soviet state. The excluded since youth. Chagall often portrayed the people of the dream of a new world imagined by Russian artists, designers, shtetl with sympathy, among them badchanim, fiddlers, and and architects was ultimately quashed when the government hasidim derived from the environment in which he was raised. rethought its support of avant-garde culture as a pedagogic Yet in the murals the unconventional behavior of these means. The Jewish Theater, accused of undermining the goals personages suggests a new world order. Chagall's inclusion of of the Revolution, received the same criticism that was meted Pi/rimspiek}'" increases the revolutionary signification of the out to many cultural organizations and individuals. This paintings because the festival of Purim commemorates the repression may be a measure of the power, whether paranoically victory of Persian Jews over Haman, a repressive foe. To conceived or real, that the theater was believed to possess. Russian Jews, who had been the victims of suppression and Perhaps for the sake of self-preservation, the Jewish Theater persecution for centuries. Christian tsars and their governments censored itself, becoming progressively more conservative in were but latter-day Hamans. the 1930s. While celebrating the new theater, Chagall may have used The fate of Chagall's murals was inextricably tied to that of his Purim-carnival to rejoice at the troupe's victory over their the theater for which they were painted. During the purges of

Haman, that is at the fall of the tsar, who had suppressed 1937, the paintings were rolled up and stored beneath the Yiddish theater. In Introduction to theJewish Theater, the vignette theater's stage for protection. In 1950, when the theater was of a Jew urinating on a pig, which Chagall placed in the lower- closed by order of the state, the State Tret'iakov Gallery right corner, the area of the painting where signatures are obtained the murals. traditionally placed, may be interpreted as a sign of his subversive intent because the act can be viewed as a profanation After tour years in Paris, the capital ot the European avant- of Christianity." Chagall, as always, couched the reference in garde, Chagall returned to his country in 1914 on the brink of the deceptively naive abandon of an upside-down world." international recognition. Swept up in the chaos and euphoria Chagall's paintings for the Jewish Theater are probably his of the Revolution, he obtained positions and commissions with strongest political statement on canvas, yet they fit wholly regularity, yet his plans were rejected with equal frequency. His within the world view expressed in his earlier work, an oeuvre designs for various experimental theatrical productions were marked by a poetic symbolism rooted in his personal cultural sought after, then misunderstood or disliked; he organized an life. Within the ensemble, the canvas that most clearly presents art academy and museum as the Commissar of Art for his

Chagall's individualist Utopian vision is Love on the Stage, which native region, only to be rejected by his students, who had hung on the entrance wall of the theater and would be the absorbed the Suprematism of Malevich. He was asked to design image the audience saw while leaving the theater. The ethereal the inaugural production for the Jewish Theater in Moscow, white-on-white painting of dancers in a pas de deux presents yet he had a falling-out with the management of the theater the theme of two lovers floating in the air, which Chagall and was never paid. The artist left Russia in 1922 disillusioned returned to repeatedly throughout his life. With this and disappointed by the vicissitudes ol his vocation in his symbolism he seemed to suggest that love, ultimately, was the homeland. most important subject and, perhaps, inspiration for the new Chagall's paradoxical reception in the Soviet Union Jewish theater. continued tor decades. As an emigre and a Jew, Marc Chagall

Introduction xiii was officially persona non grata, yet he was the country's most of intense political awareness; yet ultimately his ideology famous visual artist of the twentieth century. When he visited remained personal, destined, he believed, to communicate with the Soviet Union in 1973, apparently as part of a political all humanity. maneuver related to the dawn of detente, he was given a hero's welcome, despite a virtual press blackout.'* The fate of the —Jennifer Blessing murals, which had lain in storage for years, was unknown to Assistant Curator for Research him for decades. During his visit, they were unrolled for him Guggenheim Museum to sign, but this event did not lead to their restoration and

exhibition. It was not until the mid-1980s that it became possible for the masterpieces of his second Russian period to go on display. In 1991, Chagall's extant paintings for the theater were exhibited together for the first time in fifty-four years;

their exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum SoHo is their

first appearance in the United States."' This catalogue marks the occasion. Chagall's playlul, fantastic scenes and seemingly childish handling of paint have frequently caused viewers to presume

that an exotic, naif artist created them. In fact, the opposite is true. Chagall was, in many ways, an extremely arcane painter, loading his canvases with texts and subtexts directed at particular audiences, ranging from the francophile avant-garde to his loved ones in the shtetl. A single painting may contain buried references to a French poem and a Yiddish proverb, Suprematist and Orphist formal means, and subject matter that includes the Eiffel Tower and a Hasidic couple. The authors of this exhibition catalogue make Chagall's multiple cultural affiliations abundantly clear while exemplifying two

different approaches to the artist's work. Dr. Susan Compton, an expert on Chagall, has written an essay illuminating Chagall's art-historical context. Her thorough knowledge of both the French and Russian avant-gardes has enabled her to describe the myriad sources for the Jewish Theater murals.

Dr. Benjamin Harshav, J. and H. Blaustein Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Yale University, discusses the socio-historical and cultural legacy of Russian Jews from the Pale of Settlement, helping the reader to understand both the environment in which Chagall was raised

and the references to it in his work. One of the world's foremost scholars of Yiddish, Dr. Harshav describes the role of this language in Chagall's oeuvre, while clarifying specific textual references in the paintings. Dr. Harshav and Barbara Harshav have translated and edited an extensive collection of primary documents by and about Chagall and relating to the Jewish Theater, many never before available in English. Chagall's murals for the Jewish Theater are of tremendous historical and aesthetic value. They indicate the artist's achievement at a pivotal time in his career, summarizing his stylistic development on a monumental scale and foreshadowing the concerns of his future work. For contemporary viewers, they may also be compelling because they suggest a position vis-a-vis the role of politics in an

artist's oeuvre, an issue contentiously debated today. Chagall was a painter who insisted on emphasizing his identity while remaining technically sophisticated. For him 1920 was a time xiv Jennifer Blessing Notes Bakhtin's works see also Peter Stallybrass and AUon "White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986). 1. Alexandra Shatskich [Aleksandra Shatskikh], "Marc Chagall and the Theatre," in Alatr Chagall: The Russian Years ipo6—ip22, 9. As characterized by Bakhtin, grotesque bodies are oversized exh. cat. (Frankfurt: Schirn Kunsthalle, Isaac 1991), p. 77. and protuberant and engage in activities considered impolite. Kloomok in "The State Jewish Theater of Moscow," in Marc In the vertical paintings, Chagall's figures are chunky and Chagall: His and Work, exh. cat. (New York: Philosophical Life ponderous or lanky and angular. An examination of the tiny Library, claims that the house was confiscated. 1951), p. 55, vignettes reveals more grotesqueries, for example, the small figure beside the house in the upper left section of the painting 2. James Johnson Sweeney, Marc Chagall, exh. cat. (New York: Music. In a interview with Margit Rowell, the artist The Museum of Modern Art, 1946), p. 44. 1974 described this figure as a man "qui fait caca." 3. Angelica Zander Rudenstine, The Guggenheim Museum 10. urimspieler are itinerant players perform at Collection: Paintings i88o-ip4S, vol. i (New York: Solomon R. P who Purim. describes the Purim atmosphere of the paintings in Guggenheim Museum, 1976), pp. 76-77, fig. c. Kampf "Art and Stage Design," p. 129; and "The Quest for a Jewish 4. Chagall's painting Music or the Guggenheim's Green Violinist Style," p. 33. Amishai-Maisels in "Chagall's Murals for the inspired the production of Fiddler on the Roof, which was 1964 State Jewish Chamber Theatre," p. 116, connects one of the designed by Boris Aronson, author of an early monograph on acrobats in Chagall's Introduction to the Jewish Theater to the the artist. (Joseph P. Swain in The Broadway Musical: A Critical festival of Purim. and Musical Survey [New York and Oxford: Oxford University 11. Amishai-Maisels, "Chagall's Murals for the State Press, 1990}, p. z6o, notes the influence of the Guggenheim Jewish canvas on Fiddler on the Roof.) Chamber Theatre," p. 118.

12. Chagall's use of the world of the carnival and circus became 5. In his autobiography. My Life, which he began in 1921, he perhaps secular, in his later work. In described his inspiration: "Ah, I thought, here is an more pronounced, and

opportunity to do away with the old Jewish theatre, its 1974, he stated, "'Le cirque pour moi c'est une enorme realite. in psychological naturalism, its false beards. There on these walls Nous somme tous des personnages des cirque.'" (Quoted Rudenstine, The Guggenheim Museum Collection: Paintings I shall at least be able to do as I please and be free to show

everything I consider indispensable to the rebirth of the 1880-194S, p. 78.)

national theater." (Marc Chagall, My Life, Elisabeth Abbott, 13. Amishai-Maisels in "Chagall's Murals for the State Jewish trans. [New York: The Orion Press, i960}, p. 162.) Chamber Theatre," p. 121, identifies the wedding canopy in

6. See Avram Kampf, "Art and Stage Design: The Jewish Love on the Stage. Theatres of Moscow in The Early Twenties," in Tradition and 14. Quoted by Nahma Sandrow, "The Soviet Yiddish State Revolution, Ruth Apter-Gabriel, ed., exh. cat. (Jerusalem: The Theaters: GOSET," in Vagabond Stars: A World History of Israel Museum, 1988), pp. 125-42; and Konstantin Rudnitsky, Yiddish Theater (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), p. 248. Russian and Soviet Theater 1(10^-19^2, Dr. Lesley Milne, ed., Roxane Permar, trans. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988). 15. This information was relayed to me by Gregory "Veitsman, former Assistant Director for Technical Services at the State 7. For detailed descriptions ot the murals see Matthew Frost, Tret'iakov Gallery, who is working on a book about that "Marc Chagall and the Jewish State Chamber Theatre," in museum. See his Afterword in this book, pp. 205-07. Russian History, vol. 8, parts 1-2 (1981), pp. 90-107; Ziva Amishai-Maisels, "Chagall and the Jewish Revival: Center or 16. Restoration of the three largest paintings, sponsored by the Periphery," and Avram Kampf, "Art and Stage Design" in Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, Switzerland, began in late exhibited at the Apter-Gabriel, Tradition and Revolution, pp. 71-100; Kampf, 1989. The ensemble of paintings was Schirn "The Quest for a Jewish Style," in Chagall to Kitaj: Jewish Fondation Pierre Gianadda, March i-June 9, 1991; Experience in Twentieth Century Art, exh. cat. (London: Lund Kunsthalle Frankfurt, June 15-August 25, 1991; State Humphries in association with Barbican Art Gallery, 1990), Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow, fall 1991-winter 1992; and State Russian St. Petersburg, spring The single pp. 14-43; and Amishai-Maisels, "Chagall's Murals for the State Museum, 1992. Jewish Chamber Theatre," in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian paintings Dance and Music were exhibited in 1987 at the State Tret'iakov Gallery, in at the Bunkamura Years 1906-1922, pp. 107-27. Moscow; and 1989-90 Museum of Art, Tokyo; Kasama Nichido Museum, Ibaraki; 8. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais His World, Helene Iswolsky, and and the Nagoya City Art Museum. trans. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, submitted as a dissertation in 1940; first published in Moscow, 1965; first published in English by MIT Press in 1968); for a discussion of

Introduction B'

r #

y-i

/v1 There cannot be many instances of an artist being invited to ChagalPs Auditorium: design the sets for a play and so exceeding his commission that he made the whole auditorium into an extension of the stage.

^^An Identity Crisis Yet this is what Marc Chagall did in November-December 1920, when he transformed an unpromising room in an of Tragic Dimensions'^ ordinary Moscow house into a spectacular setting for the State Jewish Chamber Theater.' The company had been set up in Susan Compton 1919 to perform plays in Yiddish, the traditional language spoken by Jews in Eastern Europe. When the group failed to find suitable premises in Petrograd, they were offered two floors of a building on Bol'shoi Chernyshevskii Lane in Moscow, which had become the home of another Jewish theater company in April 1920; they accepted, moving to Moscow in November 1920, and the two groups merged. The company immediately began rehearsing their first production scheduled for the new space, an evening of three one-act plays by Sholem Aleichem, for which Chagall had been commissioned to design the sets and costumes. From opening night on New Year's Day 1921, the audience found so much to look at in the theater that Abram Efros, the artistic director, spent as much time explaining the pictures on the walls as the plays on the stage. Efros, co-author of a recently published monograph, The Art of Marc Chagall, was well equipped to provide answers to his questioners." But because he did not leave any record of his explanations, most of what we know about Chagall's role in the State Jewish Chamber Theater has come from the artist's own memoirs, My LifeJ In those pages, Chagall wrote a vivid account of the conditions in which he worked, describing how he painted the canvases on the floor while workmen built a stage at one end, and how he continued

to paint while the actors rehearsed on it.'' When he was done, his paintings — in tempera and gouache on canvas — decorated all the walls and even the ceiling of the theater: four vertical panels between the windows on one side, on the themes of Music, Dance, Drama, and Literature (cat. nos. 4—7),

and a narrow frieze depicting a wedding feast (cat. no. 3) above

them; one long composition. Introduction to theJewish Theater

(cat. no. i), on the windowless wall opposite; a single panel.

Love on the Stage (cat. no. 2), between the two entrance doors at the back of the theater; the stage curtain; and the ceiling painting, which depicted flying lovers and was described by James Johnson Sweeney in 1946 as "conceived as a sort of mirror in an interwoven pattern of grays, blacks and whites,

suggesting a reflection of the colors and forms on all sides and

beneath it."' In 1924, the canvases were taken from their original setting to the new home of the Jewish Chamber Theater, a former concert hall in Malaia Bronnaia Street, to which the company moved when their success required seating for more than the eighty accommodated by their old theater.*^ Because Chagall's large works were painted like theater sets on canvas, rather than directly on the wall, they were easily rehung in the foyer of the new building. During Chagall's lifetime these theater decorations were little known in the West — where they remained unseen except in photographs — and so the scale of the original undertaking went unrecognized. His friends in Paris saw something of his vision when the company toured Western Europe in the late 1920s, and they no doubt recognized that the style of acting in the Sholem Aleichem Evening was inspired

by his sets, which were still in use. But the murals remained in obscurity in the theater on Malaia Bronnaia Street for the next twenty years. A tangible reminder in New York of the project was Green Violinist, a second version of one of the murals, Music; Chagall fig. I made Green Violinist in Paris in 1923-24, and it is now in the Chagall painting a study for Introduction to the Jewish Theater Guggenheim Museum's collection (cat. no. 30). In 1946, this

{cat. no. 8). 1920. painting (then still in the artist's possession) was exhibited in

Chagall's Auditorium 1 "

New York at Chagall's retrospective at the Museum of Modern and Chagall's in Moscow be fully appreciated. Chagall's "box" Art and fully discussed in the context of the State Jewish — as the Moscow theater he had decorated was soon Chamber Theater in the catalogue.^ The watercolor study for nicknamed — may have inspired these other Russian artists to Introduction to the Jewish Theater (cat. no. 8) was also shown at produce their schemes in Berlin, but, unlike his own and, to the same exhibition, along with some of the costume and set a lesser extent, Puni's, the creations by Lissitzky and designs. Soon afterward, the company was disbanded and its Kandinskii were art taken to the limits of abstraction. Moscow theater expropriated when Stalin carried out a Although Chagall used abstract elements freely throughout the persecution of the Jews. Apparently through the initiative of murals, he never confined himself to what he regarded as the

artist Aleksandr Tyshler, Chagall's canvases were taken to the narrow path of abstraction. "Although I love all painting, State Tret'iakov Gallery for safekeeping." Chagall did not see provided that its elements are pure," he told an interviewer in

the works again until 1973, when he was invited to sign them 1949, "... abstract art is so intolerant. Everything has to give

at the Tret'iakov on his visit to Moscow. All the canvases had way, the romantic, the figurative. . . . Even Cubists never went survived except the ceiling painting. Unfortunately, Chagall as far as to say: Sei/lement nous [ourselves alone}." "' However, the did not live to see the conservation work that has enabled the greatest difference between Chagall's design and his

surviving murals to be exhibited again; they had deteriorated compatriots' slightly later ones is that his decorations were not while being kept rolled up for more than forty years.'' made solely for an exhibition. His scheme was intimately The present exhibition thus provides one of the first connected with the action on the stage and, when the curtain opportunities to consider Chagall's theater murals in the was raised, the "fourth wall" opened onto an imaginary world, context of his own art and of that of his friends and made real by the actors. Chagall's plan took this into account: acquaintances in the worlds of theater and art. Ideas underlying he prepared the audience for the stage performance by his the scheme for the series of paintings can be shown to hark Introduction to theJewish Theater, which filled the long wall of

back to the beginning of Chagall's life as an artist, and to the auditorium and led the eye toward the stage curtain;

reflect his upbringing in Vitebsk. This essay is devoted to between the windows of the wall opposite this lively mural, exploring certain aspects of his work in relation to Russian and and on the frieze above, the spectators could see his French writing and art. (His background in a Yiddish- interpretations of characters and props probably inspired by

speaking community and its effect on his art are discussed An-ski's play The Dybbuk.'' Once the performance ended and elsewhere in this book.) Previously, many writers have relied they turned to leave the theater, they faced another scene. Love too heavily on Chagall's memoirs, accepting them as though on the Stage, on the exit wall. Chagall's theater was therefore

they were an objective account of his life. Chagall's My Life closer in feeling, though not in style, to the nightclubs or should rather be seen as a response to the 1918 publication in cabarets decorated by avant-garde artists that were such a

Russian of Vasilii Kandinskii's Reminiscences^ that artist's feature of artistic life in Petrograd and Moscow. Chagall carefully self-selected artistic autobiography, originally frequented the Stray Dog and the Comedian's Halt in the published in German in 1913.'° capital when he lived there from 1915 to 1917; he must have also

It is true that the themes in Chagall's art are very often known the Cafe Pittoresque and the Poets' Cafe, which opened autobiographical; and My Life and the memoirs of his wife, in Moscow shortly before he began work on the murals. The

Bella," give fascinating insights into his childhood Comedian's Halt provided the closest prototype: its walls were background. However, once he began to study art, Chagall was covered with large figure paintings by Boris Grigorev.'* not as cut off from the Russian and French avant-garde as he Chagall knew the place well, as he had painted the backdrop later claimed. He liked to perpetuate the notion (put forward for one of the theatrical productions that was staged at the club by his first biographers) that he was "an original primitive, in 1916, a musical sketch called To Die Happy."' but despite the apparent naivete of his imagery, he was actually The director who gave Chagall this first opportunity to quite sophisticated and knowledgeable in matters of art." work in the theater was Nikolai Evreinov, recently described

Chagall's sophistication is apparent in his creation of a fully by the author of an essay on Chagall as "a friend of integrated decorative scheme for the auditorium of the State Meyerhold. ""' Perhaps the author's reason for linking Evreinov Jewish Chamber Theater as well as his handling of pictorial and Vsevolod Meierkhol'd in this way was to connect Chagall's space in the individual parts, and the complete work may be earlier work for Evreinov at the Comedian's Halt with the compared with decorative schemes by Russian artists known to designs for plays by Nikolai Gogol' that Chagall made for him. Among the most prominent were those made in Berlin Meierkhol'd's Hermitage Studio Theater in 1919." It also serves shortly afterward by Kandinskii and by two of Chagall's former to place Chagall firmly in the theatrical camp opposed to colleagues at the Art School in Vitebsk, Ivan Puni (Jean Konstantin Stanislavskii, the director of the Moscow Art Pougny) and El Lissitzky (which were reconstructed for the Theater, whose realistic style Chagall criticized in My Life." Venice Biennale in 1976 as examples of environmental art in But Evreinov was a director with his own ideas and had been the twentieth century"). Puni's was the earliest, made at the responsible for the seasons of Old Time Theater staged in St.

gallery Der Sturm in Berlin in 1921; it was less ambitious than Petersburg while Chagall was a student there from 1907 to the other two, because Puni covered only one of the gallery 1910." In those years, there were frequent debates on the nature

walls with his numbers, letters, and a tumbling acrobat, cut of Russian theater and its future, mainly between factions

from colored paper. In contrast, Lissitzky's Proun Room, first supporting realism and symbolism. Chagall must have been shown at the Grosser Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1923, was a fully aware of the arguments, because both of his teachers at complete interior, for which he made designs on the floor and the Zvantseva School were working for the stage at the time. the ceiling, painted the walls, and constructed three- Lev Bakst, who taught him painting, was then designing sets dimensional, painted reliefs for the corners, using and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev's ballets, which were combinations of scjuares and rectangles in black, gray, and rehearsed in St. Petersburg before being taken to Paris.

white. '^ Kandinskii planned his Musical Environment for an Mstislav Dobuzhinskii, who taught Chagall drawing, designed unjuried exhibition in Berlin, also in 1923 — a group of huge stylized sets and costumes for the two medieval mystery plays murals, with abstract elements typical of his contemporary that Evreinov put on in his first season in 1907—08, and

paintings, on a black background in an octagonal room." naturalistic ones for Stanislavskii 's production of A Month in the Only now can the differences between these Berlin schemes Country in 1909.'*'

2 Susan ComlHon Chagall understated his early interest in the theater. He the form they did without the stimulus of living in Paris, entirely omitted Dobuzhinskii's name from his memoirs, even where he had painted The Drunkard. In that city he was even though he began writing them not long aher Dobuzhinskii more closely in contact with new ideas generated by painters had designed one ot the early productions ot the State Jewish and poets than he had been in St. Petersburg. Chamber Theater and had taught with him for some months at Although he spent barely four years in Paris — from 1910 the Art School in Vitebsk." In My Life he did write about to 1914 — during that time the young Russian developed from Bakst, conveying something of the dandyism of this "actor in a student of promise into an artist of international stature. In life." He also remembered asking his permission to try to paint 1911, he painted a larger, revised version o{ Russian Wedding, a backdrop for the ballet Narcisse; the production stayed in his called simply Wedding, giving it a friezelike composition in memory, for the dancer in Chagall's mural Dance is closer to which a procession takes place on a stagelike space, with Bakst's costume designs for the Bacchantes in Nanisse than to similar figures but complicated by colored, abstract shapes in any of his own earlier work."^ the brilliant hues that he began using soon after he arrived in Despite Chagall's failure to mention Evreinov in My Life, Paris." By the end of 1911, he had painted a new version of the director's ideas made a lasting impression on him at the Birth, dividing the canvas into several scenes, each containing beginning of his career, and Chagall's approach to painting its own episode, which he sent back to Russia for inclusion in a remained close to Evreinov's ideas on theater.'" In an article in Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) exhibition." By the time he 1908, Evreinov had set out his theatrical principles, which seem returned to Vitebsk at the end of June 1914, Chagall's most to have been a factor in Chagall's frequent choice of dramatic recently exhibited paintings rivaled in scale and complexity moments of everyday life as subject matter for his paintings. those of more experienced French artists such as Henri Le

Evreinov claimed that theater is basic to man and that Fauconnier, Albert Gleizes, and Jean Metzinger. All three historically it developed before art of any other kind, even taught at the Academie de la Palette (attended by Chagall) and antedating religion and aesthetics. He argued that primitive produced large canvases for exhibition at the Salon des man guards against monotony in his everyday life by using Independants. such events as marriage or death as opportunities to organize Chagall's paintings on view at the Salon in spring 1914 spectacles; and that from these, there is only a small included The Fiddler (fig. 2)," a particularly significant work psychological step to theater. Dismissing naturalism, he said because it is the precursor of the mural Music, the only one in that theatrical illusion depends on showing an n/htge of the the series with a direct antecedent. Although a violinist had subject rather than the actual subject, on developing a led the procession in Russian Wedding, and the instrument was representati(»i of action, not simply action itself. Theater should dear to Chagall because he had learned it as a boy. The Fiddler create its own spiritual values and not serve some external idea may also contain a historical reference. The Estonian violinist or morality. Pure realism and pure symbolism were for him Edward Sormus was performing in 1912 at fund-raising events irreconcilable with true theater — the first because it in Paris when Anatolii Lunacharskii reported in the Russian- unnecessarily duplicates life; the second because it interferes language Parisian newspaper how Sormus, at the time of the with the direct enjoyment of what we see."* From 1908 on, abortive Revolution of 1905, had led demonstrations through

Chagall chose to depict the rites of life: birth, marriage, and the streets of St. Petersburg, playing his violin.'" Some of the death in different non-naturalistic styles. Even before he left elements in the background of The Fiddler — such as the the Zvantseva School for Paris, he had exhibited his Dead Man footprints in the snow (one red as though bloodstained) and (1908) at the school's exhibition at the offices of the journal heads piled one above the other (suggesting a crowd) — Apollon; he had also painted a remarkable Birth (1910), as well indicate that Chagall may have been inspired by the story. as a Russian Wedding (1909),"' in which the characters that he When he based M//sic on the same composition, after the would later paint in the State Jewish Chamber Theater murals successful Revolution of 1917, he altered the details but kept make their first appearance, though in a style that shows his the same device of using a variety of elements behind a central admiration of the work of Paul Gauguin at that time. figure. In both The Fiddler and Music, these interpolated There are other reasons for Chagall's attraction to such background elements are much smaller than the dominant subjects, particularly the theory of "real symbols" put forward figure in the foreground. The association of fragments of events by the poet Viacheslav Ivanov, who lived in his "Tower" on the and places separated in time and space, which he had invented top floor of the building that housed the Zvantseva School. for The Fiddler, became the most notable characteristic of the Ivanov believed that artists should make use of everyday things entire theater-murals project. to "enable us to become aware of the interrelationship and This device (which he later termed "psychic construction") meaning of what exists not only in the sphere of earthly, is intimately bound up with the poetry of the artist's Parisian empirical consciousness, but in other spheres too." Moreover, friends. He mentioned several writers in My Life — Andre Ivanov wrote, "as a midwife eases the process of birth, so Salmon, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, and Guillaume should [the artist} help things to reveal their beauty,"" an idea ApoUinaire — but Cendrars and ApoUinaire contributed the that almost crudely underlies Chagall's first painting of birth, most to his art. Apollinaire's interest in Chagall was greatest at which is dominated by the central figure of a midwife holding the very end of the painter's stay in Paris. He provided a poem up the newborn child." Yet, over the following years Chagall's as the introduction to Chagall's exhibition at the gallery Der approach remained close enough to Evreinov's ideas for the Sturm in Berlin in 1914,'' and also wrote a review of the show director to be content to allow him to use a version of an (which was published in Paris soon after Chagall returned to existing composition, The Drunkard,'' as the backdrop at the Vitebsk). In the review, ApoUinaire described him as "an

Comedian's Halt. It created the right ambience because, extremely varied artist, capable of painting monumental although fantastic, it was neither too realistic nor too symbolic. pictures, and he is not inhibited by any system.""* As the In the field of Russian theater design, where artists generally champion of modern art, whose articles in avant-garde journals took great care to relate their work precisely to the play, this defined emerging art movements, he thus placed Chagall was a rare case of an artist simply adapting one of his paintings outside the Parisian mainstream; and he confessed to preferring for a stage set. But Chagall's backdrop, his coloring the hands Chagall's more recent work, giving Paris Through the Window and faces of the actors for the production, and even his murals (now in the Guggenheim Museum's collection; cat. no. 23) as for the State Jewish Chamber Theater would not have taken an example. His choice is not surprising, for the Janus-headed

Chagall's Auditorium 3 1

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4 i'/wtfs Conipton figure in the foreground has been identified as representing the church tower; only in the upper part of the picture — where a poet himself, and the human-faced cat on the windowsill has row of houses preserved its congruent proportions — could been seen as a reference to a line from one of his own poems: they find a reliable type of order. Yet, a particular aspect of "Your father was a sphinx and your mother the night. "" This Cubism described by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger in connection between ApoUinaire's poetry and Chagall's painting their treatise on Cubism, published in 1912, applies to The

is reinforced by the small yellow heart painted on the Janus- Tiddler. "The painter has the power of rendering as enormous headed figure's outstretched hand, corresponding to the black things that we regard as infinitesimal, and as infinitesimal heart around which Chagall had written his dedication to things that we know to be considerable: he changes quantity

Apollinaire in his painting Homage to Apollinaire.'" into quality. "^^ In addition, viewers of The Fiddler might be Chagall saw more of Cendrars than of Apollinaire in Paris, reminded of Cimabue or other primitive Italian masters. In the

and it was Cendrars who provided titles for many of Chagall's review mentioned above, Apollinaire suggested yet another pictures, including Paris Thro/igh the Window.'" The various link, describing Chagall as "a colorist imbued with an

snippets of experience from which Chagall composed this imagination that occasionally finds its source in the fantasies of window-painting reflect the dislocated imagery of Cendrars's Slavic folk illustration but always goes beyond them."^' Russian poetry. Note, for instance, some lines that Cendrars wrote in woodblock prints, so popular with avant-garde artists in Russia

1913: at the time, often show figures enlarged according to their

importance in the story. As is invariably the case in Chagall's

It's raining electric light bulbs paintings at all stages in his career, a multiplicity of ideas Montronge Gare de I'Est subway North-South underlay his inventions.

river boats world It may seem strange that Chagall's Fiddler, conceived in

Everything is halo Paris, is so much further from Cubism than Music and its later

Profundity counterpart, Green Violinist. In Paris in 1913, however, Chagall In the Rue de B/tci they're hawking I'lntransigeant rejected rigorous Cubism after showing a large picture at the and Paris-Sports Salon des Independants in spring 1913 under the title Couple

The airdrome of the sky is on fire, a painting sous I'arbre {Couple Under a Tree) — obviously Adam and Eve.'*'' by Cimabue. *" The entwined figures of Adam and Eve are close in style to Russian Cubo-Futurist paintings such as those that Liubov' Cendrars piles one idea upon another intuitively without any Popova painted in 1914-16 on her return to her homeland from apparent logical connection, as in the accidental juxtaposition Paris (where she had studied in the same Academie de la of advertising posters on walls or fragments of overheard Palette as Chagall).^" Chagall, however, found that style too conversation, in order to reflect modern life and its multiple cerebral and he became interested in an offshoot of Cubism, means of communication. Orphism. This was a movement named and promoted by Apollinaire used similar sources and juxtaposed his images Apollinaire, who summarized the first exhibition of Orphist

in this seemingly random fashion in the poems he named paintings in March 1913: "[Orphism] unites painters of quite

Calligranniies , where the printed words not only carry their different characters all of whom have, by their researches, expected meanings but are clustered together on the page in arrived at a more subjective, more popular, more poetic vision

novel arrangements to form literal pictures. He defended them of the universe and of life. "^^ He admired the work of its chief from the charge that they were incomprehensible as written exponent and theorist, Robert Delaunay, whose work has often language by saying that the fragments of language were now been compared to Chagall's." Chagall became friends with tied together by an ideographic, instead of a grammatical, Delaunay and his Russian wife, Sonia, and in 1913 attended a logic. He felt that this made no psychological difference to the dance hall, the Bal BuUier, with them and a group of their poem, even though the intuitive spatial arrangement was quite friends every Thursday. During that year Sonia Delaunay the opposite of reasoned order. ApoUinaire's poems and this painted evocations of the lights and the movement of the

" explanation were printed in Les Soirees de Pans after Chagall had colorful dancers in what she named her "simultaneous left for the opening of his 1914 exhibition in Berlin.^- paintings. Some of her canvases were very large (though not as

Chagall's quotation of disconnected visual elements in his large as Chagall's Introduction to theJewish Theater) and her

recently completed F/t/,://£'r parallels ApoUinaire's use of verbal interlocking circles, with traces of dancing figures entirely ones. Indeed, ApoUinaire's defense could be adapted to read as painted in bright colors, produce a luminous effect. The a defense of works such as The Tiddler., where the normal memory of her work may have contributed to Chagall's

relation of parts to the whole is absent, conventions of scale are decision to break up his flat background with segments of

ignored, and spatial logic is replaced by unaccountable jumps circles when he came to paint the theater murals. from one part of the picture to another. Viewers who had This connection may seem rather remote, especially as

barely accustomed themselves to "reading " Cubist space — Chagall was not interested in Orphism taken to the extremes of

with its quotations from "real life" in the form of snippets of pure abstraction, in which the subject matter was progressively words — must have been confused by the absence of anything reduced until only color and form remained. Yet, in 1913-14, he like the geometric framework that served to relate one element painted a figure of Orpheus (whose name had inspired the art with another in a Cubist painting. Instead, their eyes must movement) reclining on a colored hillock.*" Chagall have moved restlessly from the little blue tree on the right, emphasized the hero's lyre in this painting, which suggests

with its population of songbirds, to the composite figure on that he was fully aware of the symbolic aspect of Orpheus as

the left, with the three heads imposed on a single body. They the "ideal embodiment of the poet whose song had the power

must have found quite incomprehensible the juxtapositions of of illumination . . . giving meaning to the mystery of life."*' a house with a foot, a leg with a stool, and a stool with a Such a view stems from nineteenth-century French poetry and was the basis of ApoUinaire's use of the Orphic theme in his

fig. 2 own. In Le Best/aire, Apollinaire had interspersed his poems The Fiddler. 1912-1^. about animals with poems about Orpheus, and one of the

Oil on canvas. 188 x 1^6 cm (74 x 61 '/s inches). woodcuts that Raoul Dufy made for this book is dominated by Stedelijk Mi/se/an. Amsterdam. an enlarged figure of the mythical hero surrounded by abstract

Chagall's Auditorium 5 space, in which a tiny Eiffel Tower as well as an equally small Aksenov." This Russian monograph (the first on Picasso in any Egyptian pyramid emerge from a multitude of lines." Dufy's language) provoked considerable response among artists. illustration may even have provided a further prototype for Chagall himself investigated the formal possibilities of Cubism Chagall's Fiddler composition. Yet another instance of the again, particularly in two rather different paintings. The connections between ApoUinaire's poetry and Chagall's work is Apparition,*" and Anywhere Out of This World (its title borrowed found in some almost untranslatable lines from Cortege d'Orphee, from a prose-poem by Charles Baudelaire)."^' Chagall's close-up which rnay have inspired the image of The Drunkard: "he saw figures in blue and white, hovering in the dreamlike space of

his cut-off head is the sun / and the moon his sliced neck."" his Cubistic Apparition, may be compared with Natan After Chagall returned to Russia, during the six years Al'tman's earlier Portrait of Anna Akhmatova,'" which has a before he painted his murals, he chose themes that were less similar, Cubistic background. Anywhere Out of This World, with easily connected with contemporary poetry. He relinquished its simple coloring and emphasis on texture, has some formal birth and death, although love dominated his pictures after his resemblance to David Shterenberg's Table with a Roll of 1919.'" marriage to Bella in 1915. Among other subjects, he painted a The connection between the last two and conventional Cubism different type of wedding scene in a completely different style may seem remote, as Shterenberg's composition of a tabletop

from the ones he had done before. This black, white, and gray with a dish and a bread roll is nearly abstract, but the principal

drawing on paper, tr\x.\x\ftdi Jewish Marriage (fig. 3), shows a feature of both works is an area of thick white paint worked in non-naturalistic but dramatic indoor scene: in a stagelike places with a house-painter's graining comb. (This refers to the space, a bride and groom sit at the head of a table with "Polemical Supplement" that Aksenov had added to his caricatured guests in front of a "backdrop" view of the local account of Picasso's art in which he discussed the artist's use of town through a curtain-framed window. From the "wings," a texture, mentioning the use of such a comb.'"*) These three

figure anticipating the one in the mural Drama floats in, Russian artists had all lived in Paris for several years before

bearing wine for the feast; "downstage," a woman enlivens the 1914, but it was not easy to see Picasso's work, except in his proceedings by dancing with a male reveler, admittedly in a studio or his dealer's gallery, as he did not submit work to more earthbound way than her later counterpart in the mural exhibitions there. Furthermore, Shterenberg (considerably

Dance. The watercolor is reminiscent of studies that Chagall older than the other two) had studied at the Ecole des Beaux- made at the beginning of 1917, when he was commissioned to Arts, and Al'tman (the youngest) had attended Marie Vasil'ev's provide wall-paintings for the school attached to the chief Russian Academy in Paris, so Chagall was the only one with a synagogue in Petrograd. The project was never realized, but Cubist-oriented background. However, in Moscow, artists were

some of Chagall's preparatory works for it have survived, able to study Picasso at first hand because the city already

including a watercolor of a secular scene. Visit to the boasted the largest number of his paintings outside Paris. The Grandparents., and scenes of two religious festivals. Feast of the best collection of Picasso's work in Russia belonged to Sergei

Tabernacles (in gouache) and Pi/rim (in oil),*"' as well as two final Shchukin, who had bought many of Picasso's Cubist paintings sketches, Purim and The Baby Carriage," both greatly simplified from 1909 onward and regularly opened his Moscow house to

in comparison with the Purim oil and Visit to the Grandparents. artists. However, it is not certain that the Jewish artists had Many of the details in these final sketches are similar to those the opportunity to see the collection until they gained for the theater murals — indeed, at the top of the Introduction citizenship after the February Revolution in 1917; this allowed

to the Jewish Theater there is a drawing of the facade of the all Jews to travel without a permit for the first time and gave St. Petersburg building in which they were to have been artists an opportunity to visit this remarkable collection and

housed.**^ But, although activity is suggested in both designs see works by Gauguin and Henri Matisse as well as Picasso. A — a striding figure and a seller of sweets in one; a woman renewed concern with French art was an important corrective knitting, another woman painting, and figures apparently to what might have become a provincial attitude, especially for

pushing the pram in the other — there is none of the sweeping Shterenberg, Chagall, and Al'tman, who in 1919 founded the sensation of movement expressed by the figures in the later Moscow branch of the League of Culture, an organization

murals. Purim features a large figure in the foreground and dedicated to the promotion of Jewish art.'"' They did not smaller ones in the background, as in The Fiddler, but here they believe that art, in order to be Jewish, should be stylistically are silhouetted against a plain white background, with no restricted, and each developed an international approach, anticipation of the Cubist touches that were to dominate Music. remaining close enough in their aims to share an exhibition in Chagall explored a great many ways of composing pictures spring 1922, which featured the second public display of after his return to Russia. He drew portraits and even Chagall's murals.'* townscapes "from life" and usually added his own quirky When Chagall began designing the theater murals, his details; he transformed interior views by choosing unusual decision to allot a complete wall to a single subject meant that viewpoints; he invented a bird's-eye view combining a he had to invent a far more complex composition than he had recognizable town with stylized figures floating in the sky. He proposed for the Petrograd synagogue-school murals. The was well aware of the inventions of other Russian avant-garde disproportion of length to height suggested a friezelike, artists because he took part in exhibitions that included a wide compartmentalized composition, which he could have based on

range of contemporary artists.'" Sometimes he found inspiration his 1911 pictures oi Birth and Wedding. Alternatively, he could in unexpected sources, such as Aristarkh Lentulov's Orneisme.'^ have followed the example of Sonia Delaunay in her Orphist However, whereas Lentulov often used real lace and tassels, rendering of the Bal Bullier. He seems, however, to have found gluing them to his canvases, Chagall soaked lacy cloth in paint help in Gleizes's and Metzinger's book on Cubism, where the

and used it to transfer patterns to canvas or paper — a device following passage reads like a recipe for the way he composed

that he employed extensively in the theater murals. The ItIs Introduct/oii to the Jewish Theater. technique can be studied in close-up in a work on paper from 1920 known as The Dreatn (and belonging to the Guggenheim We must also contrive to cut up by large restful surfaces all regions

Museum; cat. no. 27). in which activity is exaggerated by excessive contiguity. In short, the In Russia in 1917, general interest in Cubism — and more science of design consists in instituting relations between straight lines

specifically, Pablo Picasso's use of unusual textures —- was and curves. A picture which contained only straight lines or curves

stimulated by a study of the artist by poet and critic Ivan would not express life. It would be the same with a picture in which

6 Susan Cdriiptim 3

fig- Jewish Marriage, igios. Gouache, India ink, pen, and brush on paper, mounted on cardboard, 20.$ x ^o cm (8 x li V< inches).

Collection ofZinaida Gordaeva, St. Petersburg,

Chagall's Auditorium 7 j 4

curves and straight lines exactly compensate one another, for exact

equivalence is equal to zero. . . . What the curve is to the straight line,

^^ the cold tone is to the warm tone in the domain of color.

Chagall indeed "cut up" the extensive surface of his twenty- six-foot-long canvas by using straight lines and curves. But instead of the fragmented arrangement of thin verticals, horizontals, and adjoining curves so characteristic of Picasso's Cubist work — and of Gleizes's and Metzinger's — Chagall joined his lines with bands of color so that they sweep across the canvas in great diagonals and become parts of large triangles. His curves form segments of circles, so large that they form interlocking worlds within the composition. In addition, although his curves and straight lines never "compensate one another," nor, "in the domain of color," do his cold tones evenly balance the warm, he imparts a sensation of movement — alien to Cubism, though not to Orphism — to this mural, and to the entire scheme.

It would be foolish to suggest that Chagall simply read or re-read Gleizes's and Metzinger's Cubism''" in 1920 because he was faced with a compositional problem. A more likely reason was the publication at the Art School in Vitebsk of a fellow- teacher's book on the development of twentieth-century art, Kazimir Malevich's On New Systems in Art, which was published in December 1919 in an edition handmade by the

school's graphic workshop.'' Chagall referred to it as "our edition " in a note on a letter that he wrote in April 1920, when ^^ m he was evidently still on reasonable terms with Malevich."° Nonetheless, Chagall's firsthand experience ot the full range of fig- Modernist art in Western Europe must have raised doubts in Collage, ipii. his own mind about his colleague's analysis of Cubism. Pencil, pen, ink, and collaged elements (including a fragment of the Furthermore, although Malevich showed an extraordinary invitation to the exhibition of Chagall's Jewish Theater murals) on grasp ot the principles of Cubism in his earlier paintings paper, ^4. 2x 2y.p cm (1$ -Ik x ii inches). (especially considering that he had then traveled no further Musee national d'art moderne. Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris. from Moscow than Petrograd), he had used the style as his

stepping-stone to non-objective Suprematism, which he still espoused in 1919—20. The emblem of Suprematism was his 1915 Black Sq//are, which he saw as a breakthrough in the history of art. He explained that Suprematism was the beginning of a

new culture: "The square is not a subconscious form. It is the

creation of intuitive reason. The face of the new art "; with his painting of a black square on a white ground he had reduced

painting to "zero, " building on Gleizes's and Metzinger's

' phrase "exact equivalence is equal to zero. " Chagall quoted Malevich's "zero-form" in the mural Music, where a small black square hovers over one of the houses in the background, near the right-hand edge. He balanced this on the

left side, not by a complete black circle, typical of Suprematism, but by a black wedgelike segment more typical of recent black paintings by Aleksandr Rodchenko, a younger artist who had opposed his Black on Black paintings to Malevich's latest White on White at the Tenth State Exhibition in 1919."' Those attuned to the subtleties of non-objective art may have recognized Chagall's comment on this recent battle of white and black in his mural Love on the Stage, in which the outlines of the transparent figures of two ballet dancers embracing emerge from an interplay of geometric forms executed in gradations of grays. But unlike Malevich, who had

eliminated all but squares, polygons, and curved abstract forms from his white paintings in this show, or Rodchenko, who had based some of his apparently abstract black forms on recent

astronomical events, '' Chagall retained references to the world

as we know it in his riposte. He indicated the floorboards of a steeply raked stage by means of parallel lines; he placed a screen behind and to the left of the dancers — not unlike the

one he used as scenery for It's a Lie, on e of the plays in the

Sholem Aleichem Evening — and topped it with a shaded

8 Susan Compton rectangle whose scalloped edge hints at the traditional canopy Formalist art of Malevich, Rodchenko, Lissitzky, or

present at all Jewish weddings. Furthermore, he did not reduce Kandinskii. What saved Chagall, perhaps, is that almost

his colors simply to shades ol white and black but connected everything that is represented in the murals is sufficiently the tableau with the frieze above the windows, The Wedding lifelike for viewers to recognize them: the three principal Table, by adding a tew arcs and lines of similar color. He even figures (Efros presenting Chagall to Granovskii, the director of used touches of color in the ballerina's legs and in one ol the the theater); the details of their everyday world, such as the two tiny figures in the foreground. somewhat Cubist glass of milk being served by the caretaker

The different ways that Chagall painted dancers in his (who is described in h\y Life "); the musicians throughout the theater murals — the barely outlined figures oi Love on the mural, modeled on the real musicians in the theater; and the Stage, the rounded forms of the Hasidic dancers of his actors portrayed in Chagall's rainbow-colored fantasy in the Introduction with their delicately painted costumes, and the right-hand section of the mural. Here — literally at a higher

baroque figure in Dance herself, with her heavily modeled level — Shakespeare's Hamlet (for such is the figure behind face — show his continuing fascination with a variety of styles. the cow^°) points back to the dancers at a Hasidic wedding

Shortly before beginning work on the murals he had studied (which Chagall also describes in My Life"'). In the foreground paintings of dancers by Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova at the artist's wife, Bella (herself an aspiring actress) and their the Nineteenth State Exhibition (1920). Brief entries in little daughter, Ida, applaud this new world that extends to the

Stepanova's diary for November 1920 record several visits by very edge of the mural. In the bottom-right corner it ends in a Chagall to the show and his interest in their work, to the witty image of a Jewish villager (the artist himself?) urinating extent of his asking to visit their studio. '"' Her diary also gives on an unclean pig — a separate, rectangular picture that her own verdict on her dancers — that they represented an Chagall repeated on a small scale in black and white while he impasse in her work — and Chagall must have hoped that his was living in Berlin.*'" own stylistic inventions would serve as a model for the future Chagall must have been delighted to learn that the canvases

of art. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that his murals finally found their permanent home in the State Tret'iakov

had little chance of success with these artists, who, by the time Gallery, where they can be considered as statements not simply

he was able to exhibit them, were moving so decisively toward of his birthright but of his achievement as an artist. This is Constructivism.' Nevertheless, Chagall explored a style closer particularly significant because Chagall resisted attempts to to theirs when he made an abstract Collage (fig. 4)"'' — not in allow himself to be classed as an exclusively Jewish painter.

1920, as he later signed it, but in 1921, when the exhibition of His friend the Hebrew poet Hayim Nakhman Bialik sought his theater murals took place (part of the invitation for that his advice when a new art museum for Tel Aviv was being

Twenty-Third State Exhibition of June 1921 is pasted on as one planned in 1931, and Chagall fought for an international of the collage elements). The only Russian collages that collection rather than a museum limited to art by Jewish

resemble it in any way are by Rodchenko and Stepanova, dated artists who had settled in Palestine."' And when he founded his

1918 and 1919. Such flirtation with near abstraction is own Museum of the Biblical Message in 1973 in Nice, near his

untypical of Chagall, but it shows how he remained open to adopted home in the South of France, he expressed the wish different ways of creating art after he had finished work on the that religious art by painters and sculptors of all nationalities murals. should be shown in exhibitions there. "^ In 1921, a review of the

He was anxious for general recognition for the murals, and exhibition of the murals claimed that Chagall's Introduction to the June 1921 exhibition was held as a result of his own thejeu'ish Theater represented an "identity crisis of tragic initiative. He wrote to the theater management shortly after he dimensions, a point at which any word and any talk whatsoever had finished the murals, assuring them that he had proved his would be as out-of-place as at somebody's deathbed." To the love for Jews but that he equally loved Russians and other reviewer, the tragedy was that the artist lacked the means "to nationalities."* Expediently, he said that he wanted "the reproduce the unending complexity of each single atom of our

""' masses " to see the paintings; but he must have been anxious world, on which the eyes of our contemporaries are fixed. But that artists should discuss them, as well as that his work should Chagall had already found that pertinent references to the real

have official, as well as ethnic, approval. His Introd/zction to the world can make art more powerful — and certainly more Jewish Theater served a dual purpose, as a manifesto for his art accessible — than pure abstraction or strict naturalistic

and also for the new theater itself. Beciiuse the murals were not representation. As he demonstrated throughout his career, the made for exhibition per se — in contrast to the installations by world of art reflects a world of another dimension that cannot

Puni, Lissitzky, and Kandinskii discussed earlier — Chagall be revealed through geometry but is embodied in love. His was so anxious that they should be considered as works of art position was surprisingly similar to the conclusion reached by that he made sure that they were shown to the general public Gleizes and Metzinger: "Henceforth by the study of all the

as soon as possible. manifestations of physical and mental life, the painter will

Chagall's theater murals, though on the whole not very learn to apply them. But if he ventures into metaphysics, abstract, are not very realistic, as might be expected in view of cosmogony, or mathematics, let him content himself with his early closeness to Evreinov. In the mural Introduction, the obtaining their savour, and abstain from demanding of them abstract geometric elements that form the background double certitudes which they do not possess. At the back of them he as screens, partially eclipsing some figures, musical finds nothing but love and desire."** instruments, and even an angel trumpeter — a somewhat

"realistic" effect that is counterbalanced by the deliberate incompleteness of the main figures, which are missing heads or

legs, arms or hands. It is as though, like the elements of his Collage, they were simply components in the artist's repertoire. Paradoxically, however, these imperfect figures create an

illusion of a reality that is more convincing to a viewer from the modern world than any of the socialist pageantry that was to become the norm in Soviet Russia within a decade, and the murals survived in place until 1937, longer than the so-called

Chagall's Auditorium I 9 Notes 11. Bella Chagall's memoirs were first published as Brenendicke Licht (New York: Book League of the Jewish Peoples Fraternal

1. See Alexandra Shatskich [Aleksandra Shatskikh], "Marc Order, 1945) — trans, into English by Norbert Guterman as Chagall and the Theater," in Christoph Vitali, ed.. Marc Burning Lights (New York: Schocken Books, 1946) — and Di Chagall: The Russian Years 1906-1922, exh. cat. (Frankfurt: Ershte bagegenish (New York: 1947); the text was trans, into Schirn Kunsthalle, 1991), p. 80. This is the source that I have French by Ida Chagall as Lumieres allumees (Paris: Gallimard, used throughout for facts on the theater. The company is often 1973), then trans, from the French into English by Barbara referred to in the literature as the State Jewish Kamerny Bray as First Encounter (New York: Schocken Books, 1983).

Theater; kamerny is Russian for "chamber." 12. Tugendkhol'd described Chagall's art as like that of a child

2. For Efros's account of Chagall's murals and the production, in the monograph that he co-authored with Efros (see note 2

see his essay, "The Artists of the Granovsky Theater," from above). See also J. P. Hodin's 1949 interview, "Marc Chagall: Iskusstvo, vol. 4, nos. 1-2 (1928), pp. 62-64, trans, in Vitali, In Search of the Primary Sources of Inspiration," in Marc Chagall: The Russian Years 1906—1922, p. 91. The The Dilemma of Being Modern: Essays on Art and Literature

monograph that Efros had co-authored was A. Efros and la. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956), p. 43. Tugendkhol'd, Iskusstvo Marka Shagala (Moscow: Helikon, 13. Photographs of the interiors by Puni and Kandinskii are 1918). A new translation appears in this book on pages 134—43. reproduced in Thirty-Seventh Biennale di Venezia: Environment.

3. Marc Chagall, Ma Vie, preface by Andre Salmon, trans, from Participation. Cultural Structures, exh. cat., vol. i (Milan: Alfieri, the Russian to French by Bella Chagall (Paris: G. Charensol, 1976), p. 189. 1931); reissued in 1957, and trans, from the French to English 14. Lissitzky's diagram of his "Proun Room" at the exhibition by Dorothy Williams as My Life (New York: Oxford University hall of the Lehrter Bahnhof is reproduced in Sophie Lissitzky- Press, 1989). For the earlier history of this text, see Susan Kiippers, El Lissitzky: Life. Letters. Texts, Helene Adwinckle and Compton, Marc Chagall, My Life — My Dream: Berlin and Paris Mary Whittal, trans. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968), 1922-1940 {Mwrnch.: Prestel/New York: Te Neues Publishing fig. 189; a translation of his account of the room from the Company, 1990), p. 196. periodical G (July 1923) is given there on p. 365.

4. Chagall, My Life, p. 160. There are subtle differences 15. For Kandinskii's room, see Clark V. Poling, "Kandinsky at between this text and Chagall's lesser-known version, the Bauhaus in Weimar, 1922-1925," in Kandinsky: Russian and published in English translation from the Yiddish original (in Bauhaus Years I9i^-I9^j, exh. cat. (New York: Solomon R. TheJewish World, vol. 2 [1928]), as "My Work in the Jewish Guggenheim Museum, 1983), pp. 40-41. Kamerny Theatre," in Aleksandr Kamensky, Chagall: The Russian Years 19OJ-1922, trans, from the French by Catherine 16. Chagall, in Hodin interview (see note 12 above), p. 44. Phillips (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), pp. 359-60. 17. For this interpretation, see Ziva Amishai-Maisels,

5. James Johnson Sweeney describes the ceiling in his Marc "Chagall's Murals for the State Jewish Chamber Theater," in Chagall, exh. cat. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, Vitali, Alarc Chagall: The Russian Years 1906—1922, pp. 122—25. 1946), p. 46; and Shatskich, citing the unpublished memoirs of She connects the scheme with An-ski's The Dybbuk, which the A. V. Asarkh-Granovskaia, identifies the subject as "Flying author apparently gave Chagall to read, wanting him to design

Lovers" in her essay in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years sets and costumes for it.

1906—1922, p. 88 (note 6). This interpretation strengthens Ziva 18. See John E. Bowlt, The Silver Age: Russian Art 0/ the Early Amishai-Maisels's identification of the theme of some of the Twentieth Century and the "World of Art" Group (Newtonville, murals as being inspired by the play The Dybbuk (see note 17 Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1979), opposite p. 125, for a below). photograph of the interior of the Comedian's Halt. Franz

6. The company had moved at the end of 1921 to Malaia Meyer gives the name as Prival Komediante Theater in his

Bronnaia Street, but still used the theater at Bol'shoi Marc Chagall: Life and Work (New York: Abrams, n.d.),

Chernychevskii Lane for studio productions until 1924. See p. 289; this is corrected to Comedian's Halt in Matthew Frost,

Shatskich 's essay in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years "Marc Chagall and the Jewish State Chamber Theater," in

1906-1922, pp. 80-81. Russian History, vol. 8, p. 92.

7. The project is discussed and illustrated in Sweeney, Marc 19. See Frost, ibid., p. 92, note 10, where he cites a letter from Chagall, pp. 44-48. Mme A. A. Evreinova to John E. Bowlt, April 14, 1980, stating that To Die Happy was written by Sasha Chernyi and set to 8. Tyshler's part in saving the murals was recalled by music by Nikolai Evreinov. Granovskii's widow, A. V. Asarkh-Granovskaia, in conversation with Alexandra Shatskich in 1975; see Shatskich's essay in 20. Nikolai Nikolaevich Evreinov, 1879-1953; the essay is by Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years 1906-1922, p. 81. Alexandra Shatskich in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years 1906-1922, pp. 76-88. 9. The canvases, which were no doubt regarded unfavorably at

that time as "Formalist," were rolled up and stored under the 21. Matthew Frost states that Chagall's designs for Gogol' 's stage in the summer of 1937 and, from 1950, were left rolled up Marriage and The Gambler of 1919 were also requested by in the State Tret'iakov Gallery storeroom. See Shatskich's essay Evreinov (see Matthew Frost, "Marc Chagall and the Jewish

in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years 1906-1922, p. 81. State Chamber Theater," in Russian History, vol. 8, p. 92); the plays were to be staged at the Hermitage Studio Theater 10. V. V. Kandinskii, Tekst khudozhnika (Stupeni): 2<^ reproduktsii in St. Petersburg, which was founded on the initiative of s kartin 1902-191"/ gg. 4 vin'etki (Moscow: Izdanie Otdela Meierkhol'd. See Susan Compton, Chagall, catalogue for 1985 Izobrazitel'nykh Iskusstv Narodnogo Komissariata po exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Royal Prosveshcheniiu, 1918), a Russian translation of Kandinskii's Academy of Arts, London (New York: Abrams, 1985), RUckblicke, /(?0/-/^/j (Berlin: Der Sturm [1913]). cat. no. 61 and fig. 40, pp. 198-99.

22. Chagall, My Life, pp. 160-61.

1 Sman Cmnpum 1

23- For an account of the Old Time (or Antique) Theater, 34. Birth (The Art Institute of Chicago) is reproduced and see Bowlt, The Silver Age, pp. ii6—17. discussed in Compton, Chagall, cat. no. 18, pp. 166-67. That entry was written before the publication of the letter and 24. Color reproductions of Dobuzhinskii's work are included sketch of the composition sent by the artist to the secretary of in Alia Gusarova, Mstislav Dobi/zhiiiskii: Zhiivpis': Gvciphika. the World of Art exhibiting society, which indicates that he Teatr (Painting. Graphic Art. Stage Design) (Moscow: had sent the canvas to Moscow; see M. Chagall, "Letter to Izobrazitel'noe Iskusstvo, 1982). For his influence on Chagall, K. V. Kandaurov of November 14, 1911," in 'Vitali, Marc see "The Russian Background" in Compton, Chagall, p. 32. Chagall: The Russian Years 1906-1922, pp. 144-45. The same

25. Dobuzhinskii is identified as the director ot the State picture seems to have been shown at the Salon des

School of Art when it opened at 10 Voskresenksaia Street, Independants in 1913. Vitebsk, on January 30, 1919, in Kamensky, Chagall: The 35. The Fiddler (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, on loan from Riiisian Years 1907-1922, p. 275. the P. A. Regnault collection, Netherlands State Collection) is

26. Bakst is described as an "actor in lite" in Bowlt, The Silver reproduced in color in Compton, Chagall, p. 75. Age, p. 225. Chagall's account of Bakst (in My Life, pp. 89—93) 36. A. V. Lunacharskii, in Parizhskii vestnik, no. 47, hints at the "double standard" of his teacher, who changed his November 23, 1912. The story of Edward Sormus is mentioned name from Rozenberg to Bakst and then his religion, in R. C. Williams, Artists in Revolution (London: Scolar, i^Jj), converting to Lutheranism to marry in 1903. Bakst's reversion pp. 53 and 210 (note 50), but the name is transliterated there as to Judaism after his divorce in 1910 may account for Chagall's Eduard Syrmus. For the connection between this painting and enigmatic paintings Circumcision and The Holy Family, Dobuzhinskii's post-1905 revolutionary art, see Compton, reproduced in Kamensky, Chagall: The Russian Years 1907-1922, Chagall, p. 33. Note also that after the October Revolution in pp. 35 and 43. Bakst's set for Narcisse is reproduced in color in 1917, Lunacharskii was the commisar who authorized Chagall's The Decorative Art of Leon Bakst (London: The Fine Art Society, official appointment. 1913; reprinted, New York: Dover Paperback, 1972), plate 34; costumes for the Bacchantes from Narcisse, plates 31 and 54. 37. G. Apollinaire, "Rotsoge; au peintre Chagall," exh. cat. in

Der Sturm, Berlin, vol. 5 (May 1914), p. 19; English trans, in 27. Evreinov's most radical theatrical invention was his Sweeney, Chagall, p. 102. Chagall's work was exhibited at the monodrama (a play with a single character — the writer gallery Der Sturm in a two-person show with Alfred Kubin in himself), which was published in Nikolai Kul'bin, ed., StiiiJiia May 1914; his solo exhibition was in June. impressionistov, (St. Petersburg: N. I. Butkovskoi, 1910). It is discussed in Susan Compton, The World Backwards: Russian 38. GuiUaume Apollinaire, Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Futurist Books 7^/2-/7 (London: The British Library, 1978), Reviews 1902— 1918, LeRoy C. Breunig, ed., Susan Suleiman, pp. 46-49. The title of Chagall's mural Love on the Stage trans. (New York: Viking Press, 1972), p. 400. resembles the title of Evreinov's monodrama The Representation 39. George T Noszlopy identifies the head as modeled on of Love. "Apollinaire 's famous 'Roman profile' . . . while it follows 28. Evreinov summarized the article in his French text, the iconography of the Beardless Janus, a Roman coin in the referring to it as "Apologie de la theatralite," and citing its Bibliotheque nationale, Paris." The line that he refers to publication in 1908 in a newpaper that he calls Le Matin (he (the original French is "Ton pere fut un sphinx et ta mere une gives no further details, but presumably he means the Russian nuit") is from "Le Larron" (The thief), in Alcools. See Noszlopy, newspaper Utro Rossii); see Nicolas Evreinoff [sic], Histoire du "Apollinaire, Allegorical Imagery and the Visual Arts," Forum

Theatre russe (Paris: Editions du Chene, 1947), pp. 375—77- for Modern Language Studies, vol. 9, no. i (January 1973), pp. 72—73, note 91. 29. In Compton, Chagall, these paintings are reproduced and discussed in detail: The Dead Man, 1908, cat. no. 3, pp. 155-56; 40. Homage to Apollinaire, 1911-12 (Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum,

Russian Wedding, 1909, cat. no. 9, p. 160; Birth, 1910, cat. no. Eindhoven), reproduced and discussed in Compton, Chagall, 10, pp. 160—61. The Dead Man is now in the collection of the cat. no. 22, p. 170. Musee national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, 41. See Angelica Zander Rudenstine, The Guggenheim Museum Paris. The exhibition of works by pupils at the Zvantseva Collection: Paintings 1880-194^ (Ne'^' York: Solomon R. School took place in the offices oi Apollon, April 20-May 9, Guggenheim Museum, 1976), p. 64. 1910.

42. Blaise Cendrars, "Contrastes" (October 1913), Du monde 30. V. Ivanov, "Dve stikhii v sovremennom simvolizme entier au coeur du monde (Paris: Denoel, 1947), pp. 56—57; English (Two Elements of Contemporary Symbolism)," in Zolotoe riinn, trans, in Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the April/May 1908. Avant-Garde in France. 188$ to World War I, rev. ed. (London:

31. Birth (Kunsthaus, Zurich) is discussed turther in Compton, Jonathan Cape, 1969), p. 337. Chagall, p. 34, cat. no. 10, p. 161. 43. Gabriel Arbouin [pseudonym tor Guilhuime Apollinaire], 32. The Drunkard (collection of Hans Neumann, Caracas) is "Devant I'ideogramme d'Apollinaire," Les Soire'es de Paris, reproduced in color in Kamensky, Chagall: The Russian Years no. 26/27 (July-August 1914), p. 383.

1907-1922, p. 321, with the date given as 1921; Meyer, following 44. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Du Cubisme (Paris: the inscription on the canvas, dates the painting 1911—12. Eugene Figuiere, 1912), here quoted in English from Albert Chagall repeated the composition in a gouache, painted around Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Cubism (London/Leipzig: T. Fisher 1923, reproduced in color in The First Russian Show: A Unwin, 1913), p. 26. Commemoration of the Van Diemen Exhibition Berlin 1922, exh. cat. (London: Annely Juda Fine Art, 1983), p. 90. 45. See note 38 above.

33. The Wedding (Musee national d'art moderne. Centre Georges 46. Adam and Eve, 1912 (St. Louis Art Museum), reproduced

Pompidou, Paris), is reproduced in color and dated 1910 in and discussed in Compton, Chagall, cat. no. 26, pp. 173—74.

Meyer, Chagall, p. 113.

Chagall's Auditorium I 1 47- Examples of these paintings by Popova are reproduced in 62. Al'tman's Anna Akhmatova, 1914 (State Russian Museum, Angelica Zander Rudenstine, ed., The George Costakis Collection: St. Petersburg) is reproduced in color in Natan Al'tman. Russian Avant-Garde Art (New York and London: Thames and i88p-ip70 {Moscow. Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1978), unpaginated Hudson, 1981). catalogue of an exhibition held at the State Bakhrushin Museum, Moscow, 1978. 48. G. Apollinaire, review of the Salon des Independants, March 25, 1913, quoted in English translation in Virginia Spate, 63. Shterenberg's Table with a Roll, 1919 (State Russian Orphism: The Evolution of Non-Figurative Painting in Paris Museum, St. Petersburg) is reproduced in color in Phyllis

ipio-ipi4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 73. Freeman, ed., Sharon McKee, trans., Soviet Art. ip20s and ipjos: Russian Museum. Leningrad (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 49. See, for example, Sherry A. Buckberrough, Robert Dela/inay: 1988), fig. 157, p. 151. The Discovery of Simultaneity, Studies in the Fine Arts: The

Avant-Garde, no. 21 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982), 64. Part of Aksenov's "Polemical Supplement" is trans, by pp. 149-50. Christine Thomas in A Picasso Anthology: Documents, Criticism, Reminiscences, Marilyn McCuUy, ed. (London: Arts Council of 50. Orphe//s (private collection) is reproduced in Meyer, Chagall, Great Britain/Thames and Hudson, 1981), pp. 113-18. p. 212. 65. See Grigori Kasovsky, "Chagall and the Jewish Art 51. Spate, Orphism, p. 61. Programme," in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years

52. See Apollinaire: Selected Poems, trans, and with mtro. by ipo6-ip22, p. 57. Oliver Bernard (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1965); 66. In March 1922, the Moscow League of Culture held an Dufy's Orpheus is reproduced on p. 19. exhibition at the theater on Bol'shoi Chernychevskii Lane that

53. G. Apollinaire, Le Bestiaire. ou Cortege d'Orphee (Paris: included work by Al'tman and Shterenberg as well as Chagall's

Deplanche, 1911). murals and costume and set designs. See Shatskich in Vitali,

Marc Chagall: The Russian Years ipo6-ip22, p. 88. An earlier 54. In Compton, Chagall, see: Visit to the Grandparents (private exhibition of the murals with Chagall's set and costume collection), cat. no. 50, p. 192; The Feast of the Tabernacles designs had taken place at the theater in June 1921. (private collection), cat. no. 51, pp. 192-93; Purim (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Louis E. Stern Collection), cat. no. 52, p. 193. 67. Gleizes and Metzinger, Cubism (1913 edition), pp. 32—33 (see note 44). 55. These two sketches are reproduced in color in Kamensky, Chagall: The Russian Years ipoy-ipiz, p. 259. 68. Gleizes and Metzinger, Du Ciihisme, trans, into Russian by

E. Nizen (St. Petersburg, 1913). 56. Ziva Amishai-Maisels, "Chagall and the Jewish Revival: Center or Periphery?" in Ruth Apter-Gabriel, ed.. Tradition and 69. K. S. Malevich, novykh sistemakh v iskusstve (On new Revolution: TheJewish Renaissance in Russian Avant-Garde Art systems in art) (Vitebsk, 1919). A shortened version was issued 1912-1928, exh. cat. (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1987), p. 89. in 1920, as 0^ Sezanna do suprematizma. Kriticheskii ocherk. (From Cezanne to Suprematism) ([Moscow}: Izdanie otdela 57. Chagall had exhibited in group exhibitions including Izobrazitel'nykh Iskusstv Narkomprosa [1920]). The Year 191$, Moscow, May 1915; Contemporary Russian Painting, St. Petersburg, 1916; Jack of Diamonds, Moscow, November 70. M. Chagall, "Letter to Pavel Davidovitch Ettinger 1920," 1916; and Contemporary Russian Painting, St. Petersburg, in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years lpo6~ip22, pp. 73—75. November 1916—January 1917. See listings in Donald Gordon, 71. Malevich unveiled his Black Square at the o.io exhibition Modern Art Exhibitions, /^oo-/p/d'(Munich: Prestel, 1974). held in St. Petersburg in December 1915 at N. E. Dobychina's Chagall's Over the Town (State Tret'iakov Gallery) was first gallery; Chagall may have seen it, as he was working in the shown at the last of these exhibitions, according to capital then. Malevich's display was dominated by Black V. P. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn' Moskvy i Petrograda v Square, which he positioned high across a corner (not flat ipiy godu (Artistic life of Moscow and Petrograd in the year against a wall). The quotation is from Malevich, Ot kubizma i 1917) (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1983), pp. 27 and 305. juturizma k suprematizmu. Novyi zhivopisnyi realizm (From

58. Like Chagall and Popova, Lentulov had studied in Paris at Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism. The new painterly the Academie de la Palette in 1911. For reproductions of realism) (Moscow, 1916), the third edition of the artist's

Lentulov 's paintings, see E. B. Murina and S. G. Dzhafarov, statement that Malevich issued for o.io, as trans, in John E. Aristarkh Lentulov (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1990). Bowlt, ed. and trans., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism ip02—ip^4, rev. ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 59. I. A. Aksenov, Pikasso i okrestnosti (Picasso and environs) 1988), p. 133. (Moscow: Tsentrifuga, 1917). 72. The Tenth State Exhibition: No>iobjectii'e Creation and 60. The Apparition (collection of A. K. Gordeeva, Suprematism was held in April 191 9 in Moscow. St. Petersburg) is reproduced in color in Kamensky, Chagall:

The Russian Years ipoj-1922, p. 287. 73. See Susan Compton, "Kazimir Malevich: A Study of the Paintings, 1910-1935" (Ph.D. diss.. University of London, 61. Anywhere Out of This W^or/<^ (private collection) is reproduced Courtauld Institute of Art, 1982), pp. 217-18. in color in Kamensky, Chagall: The Russian Years 190J-1922, p. 249. The date 1915 and Western signature were added later 74. See V. Stepanova, "Diary entries on the XlXth State by Chagall; Meyer dates the painting 1917—18 in his Chagall, Exhibition," Sieben Moskauer Kunstler I Seven Moscow Artists

p. 264. Baudelaire gave the title of his prose-poem in English ipio-ip^o, exh. cat. (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1984), because the phrase was taken from Thomas Hood, "The Bridge pp. 257 and 260. There is an installation photograph of this of Sighs," as quoted in Edgar Allen Poe's Poetic Principle; see exhibition on p. 253; Stepanova's Dancers and Figures, shown at Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil and Other Works (Les Fleurs du the exhibition, are reproduced in color on pp. 275, 281, 288,

Mai et Oeuvres choisies), Wallace Fowlie, ed. (New York: Bantam and 289. Books, 1964), pp. 150-53.

1 2 Susan Com[)t(jn 3

75- The debates on composition versus construction held in early spring 1921 in Moscow at the Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk) are chronicled in Christina Lodder, Ri/ssian Constructivism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,

1983), pp. 83-94.

76. Chagall's Collage (Musee national d'art moclernc, Centre

Georges Pompidou, Paris) is reproduced in color in Kamensky,

Chagall: The Russian Years ipo/~ip22, p. 313.

77. Two collages by Rodchenko are reproduced in A. N. Lavrent'ev, A. M. Roclchenko/V. F. Stepanot'a (Mastera sovetskogo knizhnogo iskusstva {About soviet book art})

(Moscow: Kniga, 1989): Biirevestnik, 1919, fig. 51; and Bilet No. I, 1919, fig. 63. Several collages by Stepanova (intended for the book Gly-Gly by A. Kruchenykh) are reproduced in Alexander Rodtschenko iind Warwara Stepanowa, the catalogue for an exhibition at the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum, Duisburg, and Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, 1983, pp. 213-15; those on pp. 213 and 214 are closest to Chagall's.

78. M. Chagall, "Letter to the Management of the State Jewish Kamerny Theater," in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years

1906-1922, p. 89; the letter is dated 12/IL21 (February 12, 1921). A new translation appears in this book on page 173.

79. Chagall, My Life, p. 158.

80. See the caption to the detail ot the figure behind the cow's head at the far right of the mural, reproduced in Sweeney,

Chagall, p. 45. The identification must have come from Mikhoels, the company's principal actor, who spent the year 1942 in New York as a Soviet cultural emissary, or from Chagall, who lived in New York from 1941 to 1948.

81. Chagall, My Life, p. 36.

82. Ma)i with Pig, 1922-23, lithograph, edition of 35 copies, published by Paul Cassirer, Berlin; reproduced in Compton,

Chagall, p. 258.

83. For an account of Chagall's involvement with the project for an art museum at Tel Aviv, see Tami Katz-Frieman, 'Tounding the Tel Aviv Museum 1930-36," The Tel Aviv Museum Annual

Review, vol. i (1982). A summary is given in the Chronology in Compton, Chagall, pp. 264-65.

84. The Musee national message biblique Marc Chagall opened in Nice in 1973 to house a permanent collection of Chagall's biblical paintings; it also includes a space for temporary exhibitions and a concert/lecture hall.

85. Alexander 'Vetrov, "On Chagall," from Ekran (November 1921), Jerry Payne, trans., in 'Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian

Years igo6-ig22, p. 93. The article is a review of the exhibition held earlier in the year.

86. Gleizes and Metzinger, Cubism (1913), p. 64 (see note 44).

Chagall's Auditorium I 1 ^

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1 4 Benjamin Harshav 5

Introduction Chagall: In November-December 1920, Marc Chagall designed the first production and painted murals for the new State Yiddish Postmodernism Chamber Theater in Moscow. The murals challenged the boundaries between stage and audience, the artist and the and Fictional Worlds object of his painting, realism and abstraction, the religious past and secular present. They embodied the intersection of a in Painting quadruple revolution: revolution in the theater, revolution in painting, social and political revolution in Russia, and the Benjamin Harshav Modern Jewish Revolution, which brought Jews into the center of European culture.

It was a time ol upheaval. The old culture in Russia was swept away — many members of the intelligentsia had left or were terrorized — and these multiple revolutions were carried out by imaginative, ideological, and daring young people who

believed in the reappraisal of all values and in the need for a

new language of art. Their context was the intellectual and artistic fermentation at the beginning ol the twentieth century, which, encouraged by the new political and social order, moved from small avant-garde circles on the periphery of national cultures to their very center. By 1908, Cubism was established in Paris; in February 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti launched Italian Futurism, which was soon disseminated throughout Europe; in 1912, Expressionism had crystallized in Germany and Imagism emerged in English poetry. In Russia, avant-garde creativity

engulfed all the arts; the first manifesto of the Russian Cubo- Futurists appeared in 1912, a succession of radical trends revolutionized painting, and a wave of experiments transformed the Russian theater. To many artists, the political

revolutions of" 1917 seemed allied to the creation of an entirely new civilization; they also led to government support tor

innovation in all the arts. At the same time, the traditional Jewish world in Russia

was uprooted. In August 1914, World War I broke out. By order of the Russian army, a million and a half Jews were expelled from their homes in the border areas, often with only

twenty-four-hours' notice. Russia was losing the war on its front and the German army occupied large areas of Russian territory. In February 1917, a democratic revolution in Petrograd deposed the tsar. Over five million Russian Jews, confined tor a hundred and fifty years to a large geographical ghetto, the Pale of Settlement, were suddenly granted equal rights. In October 1917, the Bolsheviks took power. The liberation of the Jews — the last oppressed social "class" in Russia — was one of the exciting events in Revolutionary Russia and served as an exemplary case in the eyes of enlightened world opinion. Peace with the Germans was concluded; but Civil War broke out and raged for three years. For the first time in modern history, large-scale massacres of Jews erupted in the Ukraine, leaving about a hundred thousand dead and several hundred thousand homeless. Parallel to the advent of Modernism, a cultural renaissance swept through Jewish communities in Russia and elsewhere from the end of the nineteenth century. A powerful secular Jewish literature in both Yiddish and Hebrew, and Jewish political and cultural movements revitalized Jewish society, and were followed by the revival of folklore, music, painting, and theater. Painting in the European sense was forbidden in the Jewish tradition, but a new breed of secular Jewish painters entered the general European art scene; Chagall was the best known of them. Born in Russia in 1887, he studied art in St. Petersburg and spent the years between 1910 and 1914 in Paris. After a famous exhibition in Berlin, he returned to Russia, where he remained until 1922. Following the Bolshevik fig- 5 Revolution, he was appointed Commissar of Art in Vitebsk,

Detail 0/ Introduction to the Yiddish Theater (cat. no. l). where he established a People's Art School and invited some of

Chagall: Postmodernism and Fictional Worlds in Painting 1 j the best Russian artists as teachers; but the school was A note to the reader overwhelmed by the radical avant-garde (led by Kazimir In Yiddish, the word Yiddish means both "Yiddish" and

Malevich and El Lissitzky) and Chagall moved to Moscow, "Jewish," the language and the nation (the same is true of the where he accepted an invitation to design the sets for the first Russian word evreiskii). Therefore, in English "Yiddish" culture production of the new Yiddish Theater: three one-act plays by denotes "Jewish" culture as well (and vice versa), and the reader Sholem Aleichem. In a creative fury, he also painted murals for must keep both connotations in mind. The original Russian the walls, enclosing the whole theater in one Chagallian name for the theater was Gosudarstvenni Evreiskii Kamernyi environment. Teatr (GOSEKT). Scholars, in translating the name into The State Yiddish Chamber Theater opened in Moscow on English, have used both State Jewish Chamber Theater and

January i, 1921. Within a few years, it became one of the most State Yiddish Chamber Theater to refer to the institution. I esteemed theaters in Russia and in Europe. The English critic have chosen the latter translation here, because the defining Huntley Carter called the theater "unequalled in Europe." trait of the theater was based on language rather than any

Similar views were expressed when it toured Germany and national content. (Furthermore, another Jewish theater, Western Europe in 1928. HaBima, also emerged in Moscow at the time, but performed The strength of the State Yiddish Chamber Theater lay in a plays in Hebrew.) After 1924, the word "chamber" was dropped

combination of avant-garde art, a multimedia perception of the from GOSEKT's name. From then on, it was known simply as totality of a theater experience, and the evocation of a the State Yiddish Theater (GOSET). For simplicity's sake, in

grotesque and emotive fictional world based on the exotic and this essay the term Yiddish Theater is used for the institution vibrant Jewish past. As in Chagall's paintings, this fictional throughout its lifespan. world added a mythological dimension to the mere formal All quotations from other languages, except where noted,

innovations of the new, leftist theater. No doubt it was are translated from their original language by the author.

Chagall's vision that gave the theater this new direction and its inherent strength. The interaction of four creative minds — Acknowledgments Chagall, Sholem Aleichem, the Yiddish Theater's director This essay was written in a very short time, which included a Aleksei Granovskii, and the lead actor Mikhoels — in the trip to Moscow with my collaborator Barbara Harshav to study

context of the quadruple revolution resulted in a watershed little-known archival sources. I would like to thank the staffs event in painting and in theater. of the Russian archives where many extant documents of the The Yiddish Theater was not intended to be a part of Yiddish Theater (liquidated by Stalin in 1949) are kept in Jewish parochial culture. As Granovskii wrote in a meticulous order: CGALI (Central State Archive for Literature

programmatic brochure of 1919, "Yiddish theater is first of and Art), its Director Natal'ia Borisovna Volkova, and the head all a theater in general, a temple of shining art and joyous of the reading room Elena Ermilovna Gafner; and the State

creation — a temple where the prayer is chanted in the Yiddish Bakhrushin Museum, its Deputy Director Tat'iana Borisovna language."' Chagall, in his Leaves from My Notebook,' published Klim, archivist of the Decoration Division Irina Naumovna in Moscow in 1922, boasted that the Jews, who had produced Duksina, and the specialists at the Manuscript Division; as Christianity and Marxism for the world, would produce art for well as many friends in Moscow who helped with information

it as well; he took pride in the Modern Jewish Revolution, yet and discussions, including Svetlana Dzhafarova, Assar Eppel, he did not have exclusively "Jewish" art in mind. Both Chagall Aleksandr Kantsedikas, Grigorii Kazovskii, Boris Messerer,

and the theater he influenced understood that art needs not Aleksandra Shatskikh, and Sergei Tartakovskii. I also wish to only form and ideology but a specific fictional world; for them, thank the YWO in New York, in particular Marek Webb, Jewish thematics were part of the authentic, concrete material Dina Abramovitch, Eleonor Mlotek, and Zachary Becker; as that constitutes art — iinivenal art. well as Yosl Birshteyn in Jerusalem, Nava Schreiber in New York, and especially Rachael Wilson at Yale. All of them were

This study is presented in two complementary parts: kind, knowledgeable, and helpful. Barbara Harshav, as always,

i) An essay in four chapters, which intends, first of all, to improved the shape of my writing. Anthony Calnek was an elucidate Chagall's murals and give the reader a sense of the understanding and demanding editor who pulled my scholarly character and history of the Yiddish Theater. Beyond that, text in reader-friendly directions. however, this essay encompasses the nature and poetics of Chagall's art in the age of Modernism, and Chagall's relation to Jewish culture, especially to Yiddish language, which he spoke and in which he wrote poetry and essays; and 2) A selection of texts and documents, which includes two early books on Chagall and on the Yiddish Theater, memoirs, reviews, and discussions of the Yiddish Theater in time of Revolution. Most of these texts, written in several languages, are here translated

for the first time into English. This section also includes the first translation into English of Chagall's own writings in

Yiddish: his memoirs, poems, essays, and selected letters, all of which reveal a little-known side of his personality.

1 6 Benjamin Harshav chapter 1 : Observations on Chagall's Art the contrary, high Modernism meant elitist, difficult, metaphorical, and allusive poetry and fiction, while the A postmodernist in the age of Modernism reaction brought relaxation, more direct language, social Marc Chagall was the first conscious, even deliberate engagement, and eclecticism. postmodernist. His meteoric rise and later devaluation, his We may describe postmodernism as an attitude critical of, strengths and his weaknesses are inherent in that principle of but also acutely aware of, the achievements of many Modernist his art. Like a whirlwind he moved from one trend of the trends, styles, and breakthroughs. Postmodernism, by its very avant-garde to another, from one national context to another, name, implies the use of possibilities opened by Modernism — absorbing some techniques and tendencies, then retreating into and closed as well, for if innovation is the overriding principle his own world. of art, then those explored possibilities were exhausted at the

In his paintings we can iind cjuasi-geometric articulations moment of their discovery. It also implies the relativization of of forms derived from Analytic Cubism; Orphism's all Modernist theories and styles, the evocation of earlier styles predilection for circles in space; a Fauve-inspired exuberance and masters,^ and the poetic license of eclecticism. Above all, it for colors that overflow the boundaries of objects; the precise implies a personal voice dominating the functional integration chromatic shapes of Suprematism; the dynamic movement and of art. The importance of form is not ignored but, rather than strong diagonal gestures of Futurism; pre-Expressionist being an impersonal style good for all themes and places, it is deformations of human faces and figures; a dreamlike made specifically functional within each individual work of art arrangement of objects in represented space, anticipating and its context, culturally dependent, and subsumed under the Surrealism; and even minute and multiple decorative unity and continuity of the artist's personal style and world. In ornaments (ornament was anathema to the avant-garde) typical these respects, Chagall was a postmodernist even as Modernism of the Russian Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) movement in the was unfolding. beginning of the century. In Chagall's work, the seemingly Of course, Chagall was a major figure in the age of disparate components fuse into one functional unity in each Modernism. He shared some basic assumptions with most painting, often in an asymmetrical, uneasy, but ultimately Modernist trends: an opposition to mimesis in the sense of justified balance. directly depicting a scene in time and space; an opposition to Chagall's paintings have, perhaps unfairly, been judged "realism"; the deformation of represented figures and objects; from a perspective of purism — the ascetic use of a well- the granting of autonomy to and foregrounding of all aspects of delimited discourse of art. Thus, they have been termed the language of art, such as spatial forms, geometric figures, or

"eclectic. " Today, in an age of postmodernism, we can surely color. Without the successive Modernist trends, there would question the validity of a "pure" language as the highest value have been no Chagall. Yet, without Chagall in the general in art or poetry. French Symbolism and its Anglo-American landscape, the Modernist age would be lacking something. As offshoots promoted the principle of "pure poetry," a suggestive, one critic put it, "We think of Marc Chagall as the painter-poet musical, even "magical" art, that focused on the "language" of of the twentieth century. He shares this distinction only with poetry at the expense of anything that other kinds of discourse, Paul Klee. "' Chagall was not considered an innovator of any such as prose, ideology, or philosophy, can do. The trends of art theoretically defined language of art — for his deformations of and literature that revolted against Symbolism in various human figures, subversions of the laws and continuities of

European countries, beginning with the Italian Futurists, also observed reality, dreamlike compositions, 2X\6. portmanteau promoted a pure language of art, no matter how "impure" the figures were all innovations not in language but in the fictional materials they used may have been. Yet, simultaneously, the world presented in art — yet this in itself was a new language. purity of genres and artistic media was overruled, their And at least for this reason he was a much more important and boundaries deliberately broken: poetry became prosaic and universal artist than recent attitudes have tended to allow. dramatic, prose became lyrical, painting used words, and words Chagall was never a group player, neither in an art group themselves were used to create graphic images. Moreover, nor in any "Jewish" coterie; he was never perceived as a Cubist representatives of pure styles, such as Pablo Picasso or or Surrealist, or anything else, but only as "Chagall" — his Malevich, were eclectic in diachrony: they changed their style personality defined the unity of his art. He came close to every so often, while Chagall did not. several of the new waves somewhat late, absorbed some lessons, The terms "Modernism" and "postmodernism" do not and consumed anything that suited him into an all- denote any single idea, essence, monolithic style, or defined encompassing fictional world, appropriated by Chagall under

Zeitgeist permeating all artists, all works, and all aspects of art the construct of his own biography. in a given period. This is not the place for a careful analysis of the nature of such trends. Suffice it to say that Modernism The stations of Chagall's development as an artist experimented with all possibilities of the language of art; it Chagall was born in 1887 in a Yiddish-speaking suburb of produced a galaxy of trends, often in direct opposition to one Vitebsk, the capital of a Russian province in the Pale of another — some with particular labels (Futurism, Settlement (today, Belarus). He learned the fancy word Expressionism, Suprematism, Constructivism), some embodied khiidozhnik (artist) from a boy in his Russian high school, then in the work of unaffiliated artists (Paul Klee, Bertolt Brecht, went to study with a local artist, Yehuda (lurii) Pen. Pen was Chagall). representative of the late-nineteenth-century Russian school of At a certain point, the internal succession of Modernist Peredvizhniki (Wanderers), who moved academic painting from trends tired of its own evolution, and the term Neoclassicism to a descriptive realism and populism. "postmodernism" emerged in the 1970s.' But, since Furthermore, in his paintings he stressed Jewish topics and "Modernism" was not one essence, "postmodernism" could not symbols and the so-called "genre of the trivial," drawn from be a unified phenomenon either. In architecture, for example, the mores of Jewish daily life.'* Pen was aware of the renaissance the Modernism of the Bauhaus and the International Style in Jewish cultural ideology, subscribed to Martin Buber's implied streamlined simplicity, functionality, cultural Berlin journal O.v/ und West, and trained several Jewish artists, neutrality, and impersonality; hence the postmodernist interest including El Lissitzky, who came from the neighboring in ornament, cjuotations from earlier styles, "impure" language, Smolensk Province, and Osip Zadkin. From Pen, Chagall and the personal imprimatur of the architect. In literature, on learned the basics of drawing and portrait painting, and

Observaliom on Chagall's Art 17 adopted an interest in Jewish themes. In 1921, Chagall wrote to Eiffel Tower and the circle motif In 1914, through Apollinaire 's Pen, "You raised a great generation of Jewish artists."" mediation, he was discovered by Herwardt Walden, editor of Ambitious and resourceful, Chagall left Pen, probably in the influential German avant-garde journal Der Sturm, who 1907, and went to St. Petersburg, where Russian art was a organized an exhibition in Berlin for Chagall, thus building generation ahead. As a Jew, he could not live there legally,* but him up as an important figure in the emergence of he managed somehow, and was supported by several Jewish Expressionist painting. patrons, notably the influential lawyer Maxim Vinaver,' one of In 1914, Chagall traveled to Russia, married Bella the first Jewish members of the Russian Duma (parliament), Rosenfeld, and, because of the war, remained there. He who bought some of Chagall's paintings. In St. Petersburg, returned to Vitebsk and refreshed his memory of his Chagall studied with Lev Bakst, a major figure of the mythological city and his family's hometown of Lyozno, aestheticist World of Art movement. Chagall was somewhat painting ostensibly realistic, detailed pictures of people, late (the journal World nj Art had ceased publishing in 1906), houses, cemeteries, and churches. In Petrograd (as St. but he absorbed the general post-Fauve mood nonetheless. Petersburg was called between 1914 and 1924), he was received The prevalent intellectual movement in Russia at the as a Russian painter famous in Paris and Berlin. In 1918, the beginning of the century was Symbolism, which was, in first book about him appeared (it was published in Berlin in

general terms, a movement of art for art's sake. At its center a German translation in 1921); written by Abram Efros and

was Symbolist poetry, which combined emphases on poetic Tugendkhol'd, it set the terms of Chagall criticism." form^nd on the transcendental. By the time Chagall moved to After the Revolution, Chagall was appointed Commissar of St. Petersburg, Symbolist and aestheticist trends had spilled Art in Vitebsk; for a while he was swept up by the winds of

over into other arts. From the ivory tower of the poets. Revolution and mobilized his art in its cause, preparing Symbolism had moved to such applied arts as theater sets and propagandistic posters to be displayed around the city. He also costumes; Sergei Dhiagilev's Ballet Russe showcased Bakst's established the People's Art School in Vitebsk, inviting some of stage designs and costumes, which eventually made a strong the best painters of the day, including Lissitzky and Malevich, impact in Paris. to teach in that provincial town. Those two were leaders of the From Bakst, Chagall learned the autonomous value of rich radical and purist avant-garde and effectively pushed Chagall colors, minute and precise ornaments (which the influential art out of the school." Aside from the incompatibility of personal critic lakov Tugendkhol'd ascribed to a Jewish national ambitions, Chagall was too eclectic and thematic (or

ethos "O, and the desire to create decorations for the theater. In "objective," to use Malevich's negative term) for their taste. St. Petersburg, he was also impressed by the tendencies of Thus he came to Moscow and accepted the commission for the Symbolism in painting, the value of folk art, and the penchant new State Yiddish Chamber Theater. for oriental, mystical, and legendary scenes. He even wrote Russian Symbolist poems himself In this world of assimilated Fictional world as a language of art Jews merging with the Russian aristocratic intellectual scene, Like the ideal of "pure poetry," pure art to the avant-garde Chagall learned to fuse influences from Christian art with his meant the acceptance of one language that dominated each Jewish motifs: elements of Christian iconography, Russian work. In their period of Analytic Cubism, for example, Picasso icons, and the l/ibok (a colorful Russian folk print with a and Braque made each painting according to the Cubist views narrative theme) meld in his work with images of the Jewish of perception and text formation; each painting was a new tradition. There were no contradictions inherent in these variant, a new exploration of possibilities within this

intersecting influences, for they all inhabited one framework. Similarly, Lissitzky was a master of stylized Jewish consciousness. Indeed, that duality was at the foundation of themes (influenced by Chagall) when illustrating Yiddish modern Jewish culture in general. books, and rendered them in a stylistically pure way; but when Chagall soon felt that both Pen and Bakst were old- he discovered Suprematism and went on to create his fashioned — Chagall's Neoprimitivist"and absurd distortions Constructivist Prouns. his paintings changed entirely, becoming of reality were beyond his teacher's understanding — and, pure executions of that Constructivist language. The same may sponsored by Vinaver, he set out for Paris, the art capital of the be said of Jean Arp, Vasilii Kandinskii, Malevich, Vladimir world. A radical, avant-garde revolution in poetry, painting, Tatlin, and many others who developed the various and graphics was already brewing in Russia in 1910, when contradictory styles of the avant-garde. For them, at any given Chagall departed. In his absence, several of his paintings were moment, the poetics of their art was like a spoken language: exhibited with the avant-garde, but he was far away and did one speaks either French or English or Russian, but not all in not participate in the cathartic experience of the Russian Cubo- the same sentence. In Yiddish, however, one can speak several Futurists, Rayonists, and similar groups. languages in the same sentence. Chagall appropriated the In Paris, again somewhat late, Chagall deepened his links to languages of art and placed them side by side in the same Fauvism and discovered that Cubism was already an accepted painting. He used various elements of Modernist discourse as norm. He adapted principles from those art movements to his strains of texture formation integrated in a complex, own work, yet his poetic deformations and re-creation of the kaleidoscopic, and contrapuntal whole. 'We may call this world of his past also anticipated Surrealism and attitude demonstrative eclecticism.

Expressionism; they struck Guillaume Apollinaire as s//r- In Chagall's work, all the strains of Modernist discourse naturd. Chagall lived mostly among foreign artists, including that he learned in Vitebsk, St. Petersburg, and Paris are tjuite a few Jews eager to embrace the latest discoveries in intertwined with another discourse: the evocation of what in

painting and arguing about the problematics of a new Jewish literary theory is called 2. fictional world.''' His fictional world is

art. He soon came in contact with several young French poets based on selections of representative items from several and painters who were influential in the debates of the avant- historical and personal domains, refracted through the prism of garde: Blaise Ccndrars, Apollinaire, Andre Salmon, Robert and a self-constructed, simplified, and mythologized biography. Sonia Delaunay, and others. Analytic Cubism had already been Chagall's adoption of a fictional world differs from its use in

absorbed and artists were taking it in different directions. In literature in one key sense: an author creates a separate fictional response to the Delaunays' Orphism, Chagall too foregrounded world, with its own characters and situations, for each novel, the interplay of vivid colors and adopted the emblem of the whereas in C^hagall's oeuvre, all paintings refer to one total

1 8 Benjamin Harshav fictional universe, a construct outside of the paintings, but individual, carried around the globe in the artist's memor}' and to which all those paintings refer. This fictional world was consciousness. removed from and strange to the eyes of his audiences in Chagall's contemporary Yisoskhor Rybak painted Cubist

St. Petersburg or Paris, which were attracted to its exoticism. synagogues of different towns; Chagall placed all objects and Chagall's achievement — using a strange fictional world as a persons in his imaginary Vitebsk, making them elements of the language — was understood by his fiiend Cendrars, who wrote painter-poet's memory and imagination. Only a few paintings of the artist: (especially in certain periods of his work) were made as direct depictions of objects in nature. Rather, nature was reduced to a Suddenly he paints few individuals, such as his flower bouquets, a river He takes a church and paints with a church representing time, and the colorful sky. His repeated personal He takes a cow and paints with a cow world consisted of Bella and an occasional image of his parents; With a sardine he painted his brother and sisters only once or twice (he did With heads, hands, knives not use them as part of his language). After Bella's death, she He paints with a hull's pizzle continued to appear as the image of love. So did his common- He paints with all the foul passions ofa littleJewish city law wife Virginia Haggard and their son David, in a Christian With all the heightened sexuality ofprovincial Russia '' emblem of mother and son. In Chagall's paintings, individuals of these fictional Chagall himself expressed this idea on several occasions: domains appear as modular units in a large mosaic. Their^ boundaries often melt and several adjacent individuals overlap

Before the war of 1^14. I was accused offalling into "literature." and interact in what we may caW portmanteau figures: man and Today people call me a painter offairy tales andfantasies. Actually, animal; Christ and a praying Jew and Chagall himself; my first aim is to construct my paintings architecturally — exactly as geometric forms, patches of color, and the human body; the the Impressionists and Cubists have done in their own fashion and by Eiffel Tower with human legs. The repetitive use of such using the same formal means. The Impressionists filled their canvases individuals, their appearance as emblematic representatives of with patches of light and shadow, the Cubists filled them with cubes, specific fictional domains, and the general paucity of new items triangles, and cones. I try to fill my canvases in some way with objects turned them into a recognizable Chagallian vocabulary. In

andfigures treated as forms . . . sonorous forms like sounds . . . Paris during the teens this fictional world as a language of art passionate forms designed to add a new dimension which neither the attracted great attention. Art, to some, seemed to have been geometry of the Cubists nor the patches of the Impressionists can reduced to innovations in form, two-dimensional space, color, "" achieve. and composition. But in Chagall's paintings an authentic, persistent world, so exotic, whimsical, and different from our In this statement, he defines his goals not in terms of ideology, own, appeared. This successful reception was repeated in Berlin

autobiography, or national nostalgia but of composition: "to fill in 1914, in Russia during World War I and the Revolutionary my canvases." The "objects and figures" of his fictional world period, and in France after Chagall's return in 1923. are seen as "forms" that fulfill the same function as Attention to this world was reinforced by the painter's

Impressionist light and shadow or Cubist cubes and cones. ambivalent perception of it. His images ranged from the Critics are often amazed at the wealth of topics, figures, and grotesque to the sentimental, transformed through a series of objects presented in Chagall's paintings. As Norbert Lynton drastic, antirealistic devices. Spectators and critics were wrote: tempted to construct "explanations" or conjectures — often as shaky as the figures themselves — and shift from direct His subjects outreach any listing: birth, death, hardship, contentment, sensuous painterly values to the domain of meaning and domesticity, isolation, social events, the longings and the delights of ideology. His work was often perceived as a forerunner of love, rabbis and poets, family. Bella, their daughter Ida, Wava. Surrealism, which shifted the focus of painting from the himself in many guises, crucifixions of Christ and others, the Russian medium to the subconscious world of the painter and the Revolution, the Old Testament, angels. The Magic Flute, Orpheus, presentation of unrealistic, fantastic spaces. Chagall, the re-

Daphnis and Chloe, the circus, acrobats, cows, cocks, donkeys, fish, creator of a lost world, became the "poetic" painter, the painter clocks, most of these with and without violins, flowers. Vitebsk. Paris. of a social or personal dreamworld, the surrealist, the visionary,

the Eiffel Tower It is best not even to start imagining the other possible the mystic, the master of a chaotic subconscious, or the naive

lists, of the materials he worked in. the many functions his art serves, narrator of a strange biography, for which he sometimes the art and artists that he has allied himself to from early ikons to supplied stories. For example, in My Life, written in 1923,

Modernists via shop-signs and ancient symbols, lest our heads spin off Chagall related a visit to Lyozno in which he found his our shoulders in precisely the way he describes.'' grandfather sitting on the roof, the source for the image in the

1908 painting The Dead Man. Whether the story is apocryphal

Yet for the most part those various items are not depictions of is immaterial; the salient point is Chagall's attempt to individual objects in the world but represent several domesticate the unrealistic events of his painting in "facts" or recognizable domains throughout Chagall's art: old Jews of the psychological attitudes, as did many of his critics. Ironically, if recent religious past, as seen from the distance of a secular successful, this would explain away the very effect on which

generation; Christian officials and peasants of the village; his the painting depends; it would turn his art into realistic

own, invented "Vitebsk " as the symbolic small town of a depiction.

distant Jewish world; another version of "Vitebsk," with its Many Modernist trends promoted the impersonal in art and churches symbolizing provincial Russia; animals in that world, poetry, suppressing the private emotions and biography of the often humanized; his child-bride Bella and loving couples; individual artist in favor of the creation of independent Jesus Christ as the suffering Jew; Paris with the emblematic aesthetic objects and innovation in the language of art: at one Eiffel Tower and the window of his studio; and, later in his time, Russian Futurists did not sign their texts; Cubists career, anonymous Jewish masses, crossing the Red Sea or emphasized the impersonal style of art; T. S. Eliot wrote of the

facing the Holocaust; and the world of the Bible. All those "expression oi significant emotion, emotion which has its life in domains were internalized as the fictional universe of one the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art

Observations on Chagall's Art 19 is impersonal""'; later in the century, Structuralists and language — all these may concern us or not, just as a blond woman

Deconstructionists excluded the author from the and our own unrest may or may not concern us. If it does concern us. understanding of his or her own text. we write poetry: if it does not. we keep quiet. In either case we write

Chagall promulgated an opposite view. In his art, personal about ourselves because all these exist only insofar as they are in us.

biography is dominant and the depicted world is determined insofar as they are perceived introspectively.'° subjectively. Chagall thematized his biography in his art and

writings and made it the arbiter of his authentic style. The Thus, the social and political world are part of the artist's justification for combining heterogeneous elements of style and internalized panorama. Experience cannot be isolated or reality was provided by the accidental, biographical unity of limited to the here and now of an externally observed scene: the artist's consciousness. To be sure, this individual experience

contained public, basic stereotypes about the domains he When the poet, or any person, looks at a sunset, he may see the

evoked; the mystery of mundane life; the transformation of the strangest things u 'hich, ostensibly, have perhaps no relation to the Jews; the sad decline and mental strength of old, religious sunset. This, the series of associations and the chain of suggestions,

Jewry; the image of the provincial Russian town; and the constitutes truth, is life, much as an illusion is often more real than the

depth, irrationality, and mysterious warmth of folkways and cluster of external appearances we call life. . . . We insist that the poet

conventions. But Chagall sought to convince us that those were should give us the authentic image that he sees in himselfand give it in

'' parts of his own, personal biography, and his self-conscious such a form as only he and no one else can see it. naivete justified the unsophisticated perceptions of that world.

Since the language of Chagall's art is based on his life and The Introspectivists wrote that "the poet must really listen fictional world, treatment of those rather than geometric forms to his inner voice, observe his internal panorama —

became the focus of critical attention; thus, deformations of kaleidoscopic, contradictory, unclear or confused as it may figures are discussed not for their own sake (as forms in space), be."" Although Chagall was not connected to the

and color is discussed not for its autonomous expressive values, Introspectivists, his cultural background and perceptions were but for what they do to the fictional world. A scholar of similar to theirs. This may have something to do with the

Chagall's art is compelled to study his biography and cultural Yiddish language, which was their common native tongue. context as primary sources of his language, iconography, and Yiddish, as has been well argued by ideological Yiddishist

meaning. Jewish elements too are part of the language with linguists, especially Max Weinreich, is considered a language which he forms a painting and expresses his emotions on love of fusion, combining such disparate components as parts of

or the mysteries of life. This does not make him an exclusively German, Slavic, the Holy Tongue (Hebrew and Aramaic), and

"Jewish" artist any more than William Faulkner is an an international vocabulary. We must stress, however, that the

exclusively "Southern " writer; in both, the local specificity is various components of Yiddish, though ostensibly fused into

the way they see the world — it becomes the "language" of one language, retain evidence of their origin, and may be their universally valid art. played with, interchanged, and juxtaposed in a stylistic or pluricultural game. Yiddish provides a multilingual

Introspectivism perspective in its very existence.

The theory of simultaneity in art and the interpenetration of English, a language of fusion too, seems to its users as one planes was promoted, somewhat crudely, in Italian Futurism. language. Yiddish speakers, however, were always conscious of

In a manifesto for a 1912 exhibition in Paris, The Exhibitors to its component languages. Almost by definition, Yiddish the Pz/blic, the Futurists stated: speakers were, to differing extents, simultaneously speakers and readers of several other languages and were well aware of

//; painting a person on a balcony, seen from inside the room, u 'e do not the multireligious and multicultural perspectives in which

limit the scene to what the scjiiare frame of the window renders visible: they existed. As I have argued elsewhere, Yiddish is also an but we try to render the sum total of visual sensations which the person amazingly open language: speakers could enlarge the Hebrew

on the balcony has experienced: the sun-bathed throng in the street, the part — beyond what is ostensibly "merged" in Yiddish — and

double row of houses which stretch to right and left, the beflowered they could indulge in learned discourse; or enlarge the German

balconies, etc. This implies the simultaneousness of the ambient, and. vocabulary and shift the phonetics in order to speak and read therefore, the dislocation and dismemberment of objects, the scattering German; or they could expand the Slavic elements and shift to andfusion oj details, freedfrom accepted logic, and independent from Russian." " one another. Chagall's mind moved in the same direction. His fusion of heterogeneous components in one painting mirrors the world The last sentence applies to Chagall's art as well. In his work, of Yiddish, especially of those Yiddish speakers who rapidly

however, it is not the consciousness of a depicted figure but of assimilated into general culture. He could not learn painting

the artist himself that motivates such a "dismemberment of without learning the Christian tradition in it, and he merged objects." Furthermore, a painting by Chagall does not that knowledge with the Jewish knowledge of his childhood. represent one momentary experience, but involves different Indeed, Chagall's move from a provincial, ignorant Yiddish modules from several times and places, stored in the fictional milieu to the centers of Russian and French Modernist art was repertoire inhabiting his mind. part of the Modern Jewish Revolution, the total secularization Chagall's perception finds an affinity in theories of the of masses of Jews and their entrance into general European Yiddish Introspectivist poets, who wrote their manifesto in culture." He and his contemporaries entered the history of

New York in 1919. They determined that all topics and European culture from the outside, just as a radical upheaval

domains of modern life and culture were legitimate subjects for was transforming that very history. For the curious and eager poetry, provided they were presented "in an introspective and newcomers, history appeared as a synchronic "imaginary fully individual manner": museum" (to use Andre Malraux's term). Like Chagall in the Louvre, one could run from one room to anotiier and choose

" For us, everything is "personal. Wars and revolutions, Jewish items regardless of their historical context. C^hagall's generation pogroms and the workers' movement. Protestantism and Buddha, the began with Modernism, then recapitulated some of the very Yiddish school and the Cross, the mayoral elections and a ban on our European past that had been subverted by Modernism! In a

20 Benjamin Harsloav speech delivered in Yiddish in New York, Chagall himself interest, for it belongs to one total universe, which endows observed: each detail with rich meaning and depth. Hence, any detail could be parallel to anything else, any textual reference could

/ lot'e "contrasts" in which the harmonious truth is hidden. I think evoke any other text in the library, supporting it or serving as about one of many examples, in which various poles of art meet an opposite. To be sure, there are Jewish folklore stories, but

somewhere. Here is the classical Realist Pushkin with his profoundly popular narrative texts tend to be short, moralistic, or chiseled meter and the ardent Romantic Baudelaire — veiled in anecdotal. Especially associative were the structures of the oral dreams of enchanted, poisonous flowers — nevertheless they meet performances by rabbis and popular preachers (such as the somewhere in their ultimate authenticity. I recall the last art Magid of Slutsk in Chagall's Green Jew [1914I), for they had to experiments in Paris where, next to a painting by an old medieval depart from the given, fixed weekly portion of the Bible to primitive such as Giotto, a Picasso may hang, and next to him, the whatever topics of the day or of morality interested them. pre-Renaissance artist Mantegna; and next to our (i.e. Jewish) In the traditional Jewish milieu, talk and argument were

Modigliani a Byzantine icon can hang; — and several paintings by important and privileged, for it was not enough just to know

the Naturalist artist and Revolutionary Gustav Courbet. who. during the law, one had to explain it, using all arguments on each side the Paris Commune, toppled the Mendome Column to the ground, can of every issue and disproving the "wrong" ones. This mode of hang along with the magic Renaissance artist Giorgione. and so religious and educational discourse, studied and practiced by

^^' on . . . And this is not "eclecticism" — on the contrary. every male in the family, permeated social communication

and family life. A cluster of attitudes, developed in the Like Introspectivist Yiddish poetry, Chagall's art was universe of religious texts and the methods of teaching, was kaleidoscopic {the Introspectivists' key term). In his paintings, he folklorized, and became second nature to typical Jewish verbal presented a precarious but colortul balance of variegated behavior, especially in Eastern Europe, where there was a dense splinters ol a chaotic world. To justify the unity of a painting, educational network and a codified linguistic tool —

its subject had to be introspective too, that is, the disjointed Yiddish — to absorb it all and give it the sanction of and heterogeneous elements had to cohabit one personal, privileged communicative behavior. Various aspects of it were internalized world, conditioned by the accidents of the artist's then transferred to other languages by such assimilated Jews as biography and the flights ot his imagination. Furthermore, in Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, Saul Bellow, or Chagall. This

Chagall's best paintings, there is an internal equilibrium, a semiotics of Jewish discourse can be described as a cluster of balancing of heterogeneous centers ofgravity between various strata tendencies, common — though neither obligatory nor and parts ot the painting. His compositions are not determined exclusive — to Jewish verbal behavior in that period. solely by spatial forms, color, nor the fictional world in itself, Such "Jewish discourse " is talkative, argumentative, but by an ambivalent, shifting emphasis from one stratum to contrary, associative. Its typical traits include answering with another. These two principles — introspectivism and the examples, anecdotes, parables, or questions, rather than with balancing ot heterogeneous elements in each painting — are direct, logical replies; seeing the smallest detail as symbolic for among the clelining traits ot Chagall's art. universal issues; delving into the meanings, connotations, and associations of a single word; and leaping from a word or Chagall and the semiotics of Jewish discourse concrete item to abstract generalizations and theories. In

In addition to the multilingual, multicultural perspective general, it was not the logical continuity of the text but the inherent in the culture of Yiddish and in the existential coherence of the represented universe that guided the situation of that generation, Chagall exhibits other basic discourse. It all made sense when it was subordinated to one features of what might be called the "semiotics of Jewish total, religious universe; when that universe was no longer discourse. " It would take us too far afield to explain this notion based on the religious system, substitute totalities were sought. in detail, but we may mention a few conspicuous aspects. In Freud's and Chagall's perception, that totality was one

The founding book of Jewish consciousness is the Bible. person's consciousness. Thus, in Freud, every word or detail or

The Bible is an "encyclopedic" book (as Northrop Fry wrote), connotation could be symbolic for the whole personality, and encompassing all available genres: poetry, stories, prophecy, could evoke any other detail in the individual's universe of wisdom, law, and historiography. Those genres are embedded discourse; as Peter Gay put it, Freud's goal was "to draw the in a narrative, stretching, in the Jewish Bible, from the map of human experience as crisscrossed by the roads of creation of the world to the list of generations in Chronicles. analogy.""'

After the Biblical narrative ends, history is finished. The Specific characteristics of that Jewish discourse were Biblical text has been reinterpreted into a panhistoric and influenced by an intersection of communicational habits from pangeographic system of rules and beliefs. A major precept of both the learned tradition and the existential situation of the

interpretation has been, "There is no 'earlier' and no 'later' in Jews. For example, the inferiority-superiority complex of

the Bible " — any quote may be used for any purpose at hand. Kafka's protagonists, and of Chagall's self-understanding, came While Christians have interpreted Biblical events as from the religious notion that the Jews are the "chosen people" prefigurations of the life of Jesus, Jewish learning uses Biblical on the one hand, combined with their actual existential

texts as an inexhaustible source of law and language. condition (of a "fallen aristocracy of the mind, " chosen for Accordingly, typical Jewish texts (in the Talmudic tradition suffering as well) on the other. The penchant for abstraction

as well as in popular writings and sermons) do not have one and generalization, in which a detail is unimportant in itself

unfolding logical structure or one, directionally continuous unless it can be seen as representing the "rules of the game," narrative. Directionality, which gives a certain logical or has been derived from both the learned tradition and from the narrative discipline to the unfolding of a text in the 'Western lack of contact with nature. Even when such individuals joined

tradition, subordinates each detail or event to the continuous European cultures, they embraced first the abstract, learned

chain, making it functional either tor the plot or for the language ot literature and philosophy, rather than the specific,

argument. In Jewish Diaspora texts, however, directionality is dialectal language of real people.

set aside and each detailed observation is treated as an Chagall's work embodies many features of this typical

autonomous value. Every detail is taken out of its narrative cluster ot Jewish discourse. His paintings are filled with many

chain and observed close up; it does not lose the reader's colorful, concrete details, animals, or flowers, but those are

Observations on Chagall's Art 21 mostly abstractions, taken out of their realistic context; they corner of the drawing is an inverted four-square structure

are selected, emblematic representatives of his fictional echoing the house's geometry — perhaps it is an abstraction of domains, and, beyond them, of a global perception of "nature," the house, or of a folded paper representing a house, or a "love," or "light." No continuity of space, time, and causality is hieroglyph of a home with triple "roofs" pointing downward required. His compositions and remembered asides are guided and to the sides, uncertain of the direction of gravity. by private associations. Yet the details themselves are given The central house itself floats diagonally; divorced from any intensive attention, as endowed with symbolic value; indeed, street or ground (though embellished with a decorative brick-

they are perceived as belonging to one total universe — which like foundation) it seems to defy gravity. Placed as it is in the

is now, however, a fictional and personal one (as in Freud's center of the drawing, the house forms a diamond, capriciously

patients). His paintings are talkative — they have a lot to say challenging the rectangular paper on which it is drawn. In and try to say it all. There is no better example for Chagall's Chagall's abbreviated alphabet, the house signals his own

folksy use of "Jewish discourse" than his associative, provincial home, or his return to it in an unreal world and with

metaphorical, whimsical autobiography — and the tour de a topsy-turvy echo above it. Both the house and its abstraction force of this style, the Introduction to the Yiddish Theater have spiral-like doodles, perhaps indicating smoke, music, or

(cat. no. i). even a snail's enclosure in his own world. A lavish tail and

Chagall directly evoked several social and cultural domains snout are attached to the house, transforming it into the

of interest to his contemporaries. But he did it by creating a metaphor of a fox. (Chagall seems to say that, returning to his

personalized fictional world, recollected through introspection. own home base, however unreally floating in the air, he

Indeed — paradoxical as it may seem — individualism was a "outfoxed" Picasso.) prominent feature of Jewish behavior. In spite of the stringent Text, written in a childish hand and in schematized, religious rules and conventions imposed on daily behavior in simplified letters, floats like smoke above the roof The letters the small town, and the strong, folklorized stereotypes of an (which are printed, as in a caption) declare in Russian, Shagal

ahistorical and collective world-view of the community, nadoel nine dumaia {0} pikaso (I am sick of Chagall thinking

personal effort was the mainspring of Jewish life. The two most [about] Picasso.) The "about" ("o" in Russian) is missing,

prestigious activities in Jewish society were learning and trade; unless we find it in the spiral protruding from the chimney; a Yiddish proverb conjoins them in a rhyme, toyre iz di beste thus the text could also read, "thinking Picasso." The "o,"

skhoyre (learning is the best merchandise). For success in either however, does appear in the shortened version of the text below.

of them, individual effort is required. Indeed, Jews did not Here it reads, Dumaia Pik (Thinking about Pic); in a Picasso- work in factories or fields, and even Jewish tailors, shoemakers, like pun, Chagall uses the first syllable of that artist's name, peddlers, and other artisans (a third of the Jewish population in "pik," which in Russian means "peak," in this case the summit Vitebsk at Chagall's time) had very few helpers. With the of art. The placement of this inscription, however, suggests Modern Jewish Revolution, this prevalent tendency toward as a subtext a popular though vulgar Yiddish idiom, ikh hob

individualism was enhanced even further as each person broke ini in tokhes (I have him in my ass, i.e., I don't give a damn the strong chains of a conventional and religious community: about him).

hence the high value assigned in this period to autobiography In the upper-right corner is a cloud, derived from Symbolist and to poetry, genres focusing on individual consciousness. painting, from which a long arm stretches down (an allusion to Introspection gave the individual the truth of his internal Michelangelo?) to touch (with the famous tip of a finger) the world and internal strength. A Jewish-German writer argued inverted foot of the topsy-turvy Chagall. The soft, rounded

that every poet is a Jew, whether he was born one or not, Symbolist area in the upper right is set in opposition to the because Jews are the ultimate individualists in the atomistic Cubist forms in the center. The representation of Chagall

big city.'^ utilizes a third stylistic language and is clearly a gesture

Chagall's capricious and willful compositions and behavior against Cubism. Essentially, it is a simplified drawing of a were part of that individualism. He threw a temper tantrum human figure with a recognizable face; rudimentary shading

when the Yiddish Theater's director Aleksei Granovskii put a indicates a three-dimensional body with rounded limbs. It is real towel on his painted stage, and he broke the chairs in the not broken down into shards of semigeometric areas, as in an Hadassah synagogue in Jerusalem when he discovered that his Analytic Cubist portrait. It seems to represent the young magnificent Biblical windows were buried in a tiny edifice. Chagall (twenty-seven years old at the time), lying leisurely in Nevertheless, his fame and general reception were due in part the grass, and suddenly waking up with a start to think how

to his appeal to the most common stereotypes of Jewish and not to think about Picasso. But, at the same time, it exhibits a

non-Jewish life. drastic antirealistic gesture — the naturalistic human figure is

bent ninety degrees in an entirely unnatural way. It could be

Thinking About Picasso read, "I don't give a damn about reality if I have to fill out a Before moving on to Chagall's murals, let us discuss some basic corner of my drawing.""' The clownishly inverted left foot and principles of his art as they apply to two examples. Chagall was the free-floating house placed in his inverted lap indicate the quick to learn the languages of Modernist art, and agile in willful arrangement of a fictional world and invite the

distancing himself from them. This gesture of independence is spectator to interpret it and provide a context and a narrative.

common in Chagall's typical style, which I call demonstrative If Picasso's paintings send us to rethink art, Chagall's send us

eclecticism. This demonstrative eclecticism can be seen in a to rethink reality and, simultaneously, to read the prototypical

black-ink drawing of 1914, probably made upon Chagall's biography of the painter, especially here, where he is both the

return to Russia, which is known by the misleading title maker of the drawing and its protagonist, the focus of its

Thinking About Picasso (fig. 6). In it, a house is drawn with internal point of view, which organizes the drawing while

simple geometric shapes, resulting in a two-dimensional, flat looking away from it.

presentation; its schematic doors and windows look like letters This drastic break in the naturalistic depiction of a human

of some elementary language. Traversing its roof are two figure (it cannot be predicted when moving along the "normal" stripes with simplified shaded and white areas; one stripe body) can be described by the metaphor of the "catastrophe

bleeds from the triangle roof to the square house — a gesture theory""' It is cognate to Kafka's drastic breaks of realistic indicating the autonomy of spatial forms. In the upper-left credibility in the midst of an otherwise pedantic, realistic

22 Benjamin Harshav fig. 6

Thinking About Picasso, 1914.

Black ink on paper, ip.i x 21.6 cm (y '/-• x 8 '/.« inches). Musee national d'art moderne. Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris.

Observations on Chagall's Art 23 description. In "Blumfield, an Elderly Bachelor," for example, to fill his pictorial space. two little balls pop up suddenly in a bachelor's apartment and The modular elements assembled in Thinking About Picasso keep bouncing up and down. In "The Judgment," Georg and in more complex paintings enter various negotiations of

Bendemann commits suicide for no reason that is detectable in metaphoricity, analogy, inclusion, counterpoint, and

what preceded it. And the first chapter of The Trial opens with composition. "We can explain how they operate together in one the strange, implausible event of K.'s non-arrest arrest; then, object of art. But why the specific selection of those modules

taking that catastrophe for granted, there is a step-by-step rather than others? This question can be answered only in a description in almost tedious detail of an arrest (that may be a Yiddish manner, with the question, ""Why not?" Or, better,

"mistake" or a "joke") until, suddenly, K. says, "This is not with a Yiddish riddle: "What is green, hangs on the wall, and

capital punishment yet" — and a whole new dimension of whistles? — A herring. Why hangs on the wall? — I hung it

reality is introduced. Such sudden "catastrophes" — and there. Why green? — It's my herring, I can paint it as I want. their smaller forerunners, strange (in Kafka) or teasing And why whistle? — So you have something to ask." Chagall (in Chagall) — stir us to question the realism ot the work of knew a lot about herrings (his father carried barrels of them art as a whole, or the different order of meaning we are invited every day), and he painted them as he felt (especially green). In to give the text. some sense, this colloquial anecdote describes the composition

One difference between fiction and painting, however, is of a Chagall painting, even the murals for the Yiddish Theater.

that fiction is linear — we get to the catastrophe only when we But in a deeper sense, the justification of this hodgepodge

get to it (for that reason, Kaflva often announces the basic assembly derives from the fact that all accidental and catastrophe in the first sentence), while in painting the discontinuous individuals cohabiting one canvas are linked to a catastrophe may appear in the midst of a figure, though our eye unified Chagallian universe, permeating his whole oeuvre, in

finds it immediately, even before we figure out the naturalistic which each of them makes sense.

parts of the figure. It is a perfect example of the central literary

device that the Russian Formalists called ostratineiiie (making Color and spatial form strange), which calls the reader's attention to the text as an Color complicates the issue immensely — and Chagall placed a

artificial object made by its iiuthor rather than an illusion of a great emphasis on it. As many critics have pointed out, the

"world." (Brecht borrowed the concept for his key term liberation of color from the boundaries of depicted objects is a verfremdung [alienation], denoting the breaking down of the basic trait of Modernist painting. Artists as diverse as "Vincent realistic illusion in theater.) Sometimes, Chagall did not need van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Kandinskii recognized color as much — one major "catastrophe" — to call our attention to an independent expressive force, having spiritual or musical the strangeness of the painting, as in the reverse bending of the qualities that affect the viewer in an unmediated way. body here. Kandinskii wrote in Munich in 1912, "Generally speaking,

In the case of Thinking About Picasso, the basic color directly influences the soul. Color is the key-board, the

catastrophe — the defiance of normal human anatomy — is eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings.

joined by secondary catastrophes and willful deformations such The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another as the house that defies gravity and runs off as a fox, and the purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul."'° topsy-turvy abstraction of the house in the upper-left corner, Kandinskii was influenced by Wilhelm Worringer, a

looking down on it all in an inverted perspective. Such willful professor of aesthetics in Munich who, in his book Abstraktion catastrophes, drastic breaks in a normal, realistic flow, appear inid Einfiihliing {Abstraction and Empathy, 1908) promoted the

in many forms and were Chagall's trademark from the theory that abstract art is one of the two alternating options in beginning. Indeed, Chagall was a lyrical joker, an optimist art history: abstraction, which generates unlimited geometric of an absurdist world perception, a comedian Kafka. Their patterns, and empathy, which results in closed paintings

affinity is especially obvious in the "realization of depicting transient human and natural figures. Chagall was not

metaphors " — a technique that is not metaphoric at all, but, necessarily familiar with Worringer's writings, but his theories

on the contrary, takes every metaphor literally and depicts it as were present in the intellectual and artistic air of the period. In a fact in the fictional world, making that world itself absurd. his paintings, Chagall combined both poles — abstraction and

Such is the huge insect that Gregor Samsa actually turns into empathy — and this attitude also influenced his treatment of in Kafka's "Metamorphosis"; or, in Over Vitebsk (1915-20), color. For Chagall, color had both an abstract function, Chagall's depiction of a Jew with a sack who actually "goes influencing the spectator directly, and an expressive function, over the houses" (a Yiddish idiom meaning "is a beggar"). interacting with the presented world. Indeed, he often The basic units of this drawing are modules selected from emphasized both aspects in the same painting, with some color

Chagall's fictionalized world, arranged to fill, in asymmetrical areas subordinated to the outlines of figures and spatial forms, balance, the entire sheet of paper. No continuity or direction of and others independent and dominant in parts of the painting.

time, space, and causality are given a chance here. The This is a juggling act in which each painting exhibits an composition places a three-dimensional figure (the person) asymmetrical equilibrium of painterly and representational

along with a two-dimensional object (the image of the house) forces. He treated all other strata that operate in his works in a in a demonstratively two-dimensional space. No single similarly dual manner.

principle is responsible for the overall order of the painting; a Generally speaking, we may distinguish five major strata

focus of attention at one end is not echoed but compensated for that interact in most paintings: individuals (human and animal by a different focus of attention on the other end. This new figures and objects); social functionality of the individuals;

kind of composition, oi asymmetrical balancing of opposite centers of continuity of a presented world; spatial form; and color. The

gravity, is a concomitant of the heterogeneity of styles and first three are aspects of the presented world, while the last two fictional domains in Chagall's painting; in the same painting, no continuity is either necessary in his represented world or in fig- 7

his style, for where one fails, the other takes over. Thus, I and the "Village, 1911.

Chagall foregoes both the options of an "inherent" organization Oil on canvas, 192. 1 x 1^1.4 cm (y$ Vs x ^9 '!» inches). of the represented world and of Cubist, Renaissance, or any Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. other formal symmetries; instead he juggles elements of both Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund.

24 Benjamin Harshav Observations on Chagall's An 25 are aspects of the organized canvas. In different periods of his paintings, we often encounter portmanteau figures in

life, Chagall autonomized and deformed one or several of these combinations such as human/animal, man/woman, child/old strata, while simultaneously evoking their presence. Thus, person, animate/inanimate, and, as here, Jew/Christian.

perspective was suggested and then subverted; human Hgures If, however, one assumes that the green man is not Chagall, were deformed, yet offered to our attention; the continuities of but the representation of an authentic man of the village, a presented world were disrupted, yet indicated, emphasizing Chagall may still be discovered peeping out of the black,

the disruption. gaping space of the Church and observing it all. (Adherents of In traditional, realistic painting (admittedly, a the former interpretation have suggested that the small figure

generalization lumping together a great variety of things) all is a priest, but his face could easily be Chagall's.) Of course, in five strata basically overlap (or make believe they do). Even so, Chagall's world they may both represent Chagall. In any case, both spatial form and color may create autonomous patterns, two internal, "na'ive" points of view are established, through such as symmetry or perspective in a Renaissance painting, or which the other parts of the village world are perceived: the patterns of a color dispersed in various parts of the canvas, or point of view of the green man in the foreground, his gaze quasi-abstract shaping of colors on a drapery. And yet, the fixed on the animal head with the rest of the scene perhaps in appearance and boundaries of each color and spatial pattern are, the back of his mind; and the point of view of the smaller man on the whole, "motivated" (to use a Russian Formalist term) looking out of the village church onto the free scene of

realistically; they are justified by the nature of the depicted emotions. Simultaneously, however, an external point of view is objects. This coordination between strata became shaky in the present, that of the painter-poet, who does not hide behind his age of Modernism. In various trends of Modernism, one work of art but manipulates the strata of the painting at will, stratum or another was subverted; for example. Marcel for any spectator to see.

Duchamp's objets trouves defy the social functionality of real Though the painting emphasizes a "world, " there are (nonart) objects. In abstract painting, there may be no several conspicuous geometric forms independent of the figures

presented individuals at all, and the first three strata are of that world, claiming for themselves a competing, quasi-

absent. geometric principle of organization. Most conspicuous is the Paul Cezanne promoted semigeometric forms in space; their imprecise circle in the center, which cuts through and unifies

very principle seems to be in opposition to the flowing, the man and the animal. This circle is echoed by a smaller curvilinear forms of living nature. But nonetheless he circle with inverted red and white colors, intersecting the motivated those semigeometric bodies by objects found in his major one, but not related to any presented figures.

depicted nature (e.g., buildings among trees) as well as — and Furthermore, the geometric principle is repeated in several

here is a leap — by the nature of his metalanguage, the brush semicircular lines, drawn in a nonconcentric manner. That strokes executed on a canvas. The next generation did not includes two intersecting ovoids through the calf's head, as worry about natural motivation, but broke up a tree or a face well as several continuations of one oval in almost-straight into separate color areas, or (in Cubism) broke up the human lines. Some of the outlines of the objects and figures are also figure into semigeometric independent units, with their involved in the geometric network; like verbal ambiguities in autonomous shadings of lighter and darker hues. Chagall did poetry, they participate in both systems. Crisscrossing diagonal both: he played between realism and nonrealism in all five lines divide the great circle like spokes of a wheel, touch the strata, and shifted his emphasis mid-painting from one stratum outlines of the two faces, and create five sections with different to the other. Let us look at an example. functions in the fictional world of the picture. The upper wedge forgoes geometry to create a horizon, or the upper limits / and the Village of a globe, where the peasant pair and the village houses are

The famous painting / and the Village, in the collection of the placed (almost realistically — but for the woman and two

Museum of Modern Art, New York (fig. 7), was produced in houses standing on their heads). Paris in 1911-12 from a distance of memory. (A later, gouache Thus, spatial figures may act as independent geometric

and watercolor version is in the collection of the Guggenheim bodies or they may be motivated by realistic objects and

Museum; cat. no. 31.) That distance is underscored by the dependent on their shape. Competition exists between the two unrealistic, impossible proportions and continuities between principles of composition as does mutual reinforcement. The

the modules of presented "reality"; if it had been intended as a overall semigeometric organization of space compensates for

depiction of reality, it would be either absurd or incompetent any discontinuity in the fictional space of the presented village;

or both. Only the simultaneous existence of the figures and where one fails, the other takes over. As is often the case in his scenes in memory can justify such disproportions and work, Chagall doesn't know what to do with distance in a

incongruous continuities. It is as if the artist were saying, depicted landscape: he paints a rising, almost vertical ground,

"Those are the things I remember simultaneously, and I shall feels uncomfortable with its awkward perspective, and fills it

put them wherever I find space on the canvas." in with figures, whether contiguous with the surrounding

Most of the canvas is occupied by the heads of a young man reality or not. and of an animal (presumably a calf), looking into each other's The same holds for color. Colors, many and bright, are

eyes, as is underscored didactically by the thin line linking delineated with clear-cut boundaries, but within each division

them. From the title / and the Vdlage (given by Cendrars), the they are alive, constantly shifting, interacting. Color deviates

viewer may assume that the green head is Chagall's and the from the natural function of an object's surface in two major

village is represented through its livestock. (In Yiddish folk ways; an "unnatural," unexpected color covers the surface of an

semantics, "village " indicated the world of the "goyim," the individual; or colors create spatial areas in their own right, as a

Christian peasants; see Chapter 4, "Chagall's Cultural different kind of reality, shifting the emphasis from the Context.") The green man, however, wears a cross — which presented world to the surface of the painting itself An

may be explained in this interpretation as Chagall trying to example of the former in / and the Vdlage is the green face; the

identify himself with the Christian village. Partial overlapping color is precisely delineated by the form of the face (though the

of two individuals or two opposing categories is frecjuent in boundaries of the face itself are guided in part by the spatial

Chagall's work; parallel to the portmanteau words of Modernist forms), but its incongruity makes a statement so strong we

literature, they may be cA\it<\ portmanteau jigiires. In his don't feel that most of the head is cut out of the picture.

26 Benjamin Harshav Indeed, ic is the relation between the human head and the additional metonymies: the parallelism between this couple animal head that counts here, rather than the presentation of a and the peasant couple in the background; the motherly whole human or animal figure. The same green reappears as an function of the cow in the embedded milking scene; the strings independent agent throughout the painting, one of several of beads on the necks of the boy and the calf; the similarity of unifying motifs. The peasant houses are also painted in strong, the milking woman to the woman in the peasant couple; and

jolly colors — in a country where buildings and garb are the line (conspicuous when the picture is inverted, as Chagall

usually gray, and where Maiakovskii caused a scandal of sorts did when he painted it) that leads from the scythe, through the by wearing a yellow sweater in the capital! The white in the woman's gesture, to the young man's eye. upper slice would, in another painting, suggest snow, but the The principles described above are, of course, not

man with the scythe and the bouquet below suggest harvest ubiquitous in all of Chagall's work. Rather, I have sought to time, and thus turn the white into an unnatural color as well, describe a set of basic options that grew, developed, and indicating vacuous space rather than physical ground. changed with time, and from which Chagall selected various

The same double-directed relationship we observe between aspects and possibilities in the course of his life. A full account geometric forms and the fictional world holds true of the of Chagall's art would need a careful historical description. relationship between color and spatial forms: in part, colors are confined within the limits of the semigeometric figures, and, in part, they glide outside the spatial form. Red, subordinated to the geometric form in the circles, spills over their boundaries and becomes a dominant, sweeping space of its own on the lower left, which is echoed throughout the picture. The strong confrontation of the two opposing colors, green and red, creates the central organizing power in the color composition of the painting, tied together by the circular form. It is this alliance that foregrounds the blue and the black of the sky in the background. But the colors, too, do not organize the space as a whole and retreat in the upper part, giving way to the dominance of the fictional world: the peasant pair and the line (rather than street) of houses strung in a row. Thus three competing principles of composition, based on three strata — presented world, spatial form, and color — intersect, reinforcing and complementing one another.

The disproportion in the sizes of the objects is not entirely antiperspectival. The two friends in love, young man and animal, are shown close up and large, while the smaller village is indicated in the background. But there is no transition in represented space between them (in the form of streets, roads, or fields) — just a rising white, globelike surface. A possibility of perspective is suggested and then defied and discontinued.

The same is true for the head, disproportionately occupying the bulk of the church. The contours of the two frontal figures and some of the houses look almost like flat paper cutouts (though there is some roundness in the middle of the bodies). On the other hand, the peasants, the milking scene, the fingers, and the fruit are three-dimensional. What we have is not an overall perspective but multiple planes placed one behind the other.

Yet the order of the planes is sometimes confused. Thus, the visor of the young man's hat is both part of the front plane and a foundation of the house in the distance. And the small milking scene is placed in the large animal head, reversing perspective and forcing a nonrealistic reading. The shifting dominance of the major strata — color, geometric form, and human and social space — is echoed in the shifting functions at work in the picture. The animal head seems to be a calf (with a cow indicated in its head); functionally, in this painting, the calf is a beloved to whom the young man stretches a bunch of grapes or a bouquet of flowers; and the man himself wears the hat of a school uniform and a cross, identifying himself (if he is Chagall) with the "goyish" village and its love of animals. Even human love, indicated in

the inverted man-woman pair, is the simple, healthy love of a working peasant and a sensuous village woman, who invites him home with a generous gesture of her hands. We can say,

with Roman Jakobson, that here "every metonymy is a metaphor," every two items placed side by side may evoke a metaphoric construct by the reader. Thus, the boy's loving look and offer of a bouquet to the calf transforms the animal into a

metaphor of his beloved. This is underscored by several

Observations on Chagall's Art I 27 \^ \ 7 '-1% ' 4^

28 Benjamin Harshav Chapter 2: Chagall's Murals walls, and, according to some sources, the ceiling was painted as well. Thus, instead of seeing a painting in a theater, the A total painting environment audience experienced a performance within a Chagallian four- The murals Chagall made for the State Yiddish Chamber wall space. It was soon nicknamed "Chagall's box." A critic Theater in Moscow were a landmark for both the painter and described the impression: the theater. The theater was transformed from a small actors' studio producing traditional plays in a generally The task that confronted the artist — to paint the auditorium of the Stanislavskiian manner to one embracing Chagall's avant-garde theater — challenged him to a dialogue between the auditorium and conception of Modern art, combined with his vision of Sholem the stage. The auditorium, presumably embodying life itself, life Aleichem and the totality and vitality of topsy-turvy Jewish standing against the stage, speaks in Chagall's Introduction to the existence. In a few years it became one of the most celebrated Yiddish Theater about the ever-theatrical nature of mundane life theaters in Europe. Chagall himself did not recover from the itself about life itself being drunk on the elixir of theatricality, about exhilarating experience of having created a huge object of Chagall's paintings connecting the ties between the Harlequinade of " public art — he kept repeating, "Give me a wall!" — until he the stage and the Harlequinade of mundane life. made his great stained-glass windows, tapestries, and ceilings in churches, synagogues, and opera houses after World War II. Chagall hated any naturalistic disturbance and pitched a Founded in 1919 in Petrograd, the Yiddish Chamber temper tantrum when Granovskii, in the Stanislavskiian Theater moved to Moscow in the end of 1920, where its second tradition, hung a real towel on the stage. Chagall even painted birth occurred. Abram Efros, the art critic who co-authored the the rags that were bought to make costumes, and covered the first book about Chagall," was appointed artistic director of the actors' bodies and faces with colorful dots. As Efros tells it: theater; he persuaded the director, Aleksei Granovskii, to commission Chagall to design the stage sets for the first He obviously considered the spectator a fly, which would soar out of its production in Moscow. Chagall had just been defeated by the chair, sit on Mikhoels's hat and observe with the thousand titty

radical abstractionists Malevich and Lissitzky in his own crystals of its fly's eye what he, Chagall, had conjured up there. . . . People's Art School in Vitebsk, and a commission from On the day of the premiere, just before Mikhoels's entrance on the stage, Moscow was welcome, even though it was for a separate Jewish he clutched the actor's shoulder andfrenziedly thrust his brush at him (rather than general) institution. The opening production was as at a mannequin, daubing dots on his costume andpainting tiny to be the Sholem Aleichem Evening, with two one-act plays by birds and pigs no opera glass could observe on his visored cap, despite " that Yiddish writer — Agents: A Joke in One Act and Mazel Tov: repeated, anxious summonses to the stage.

A Comedy in One Act — as well as his It's a Lie, a prose dialogue. Because these were light pieces — almost caricatures — The actors were thus perceived as moving Chagallian

Granovskii could fill in the texts with a theatrical conception figures. This coincided with Granovskii's theory that, since the of the gesamtkiinstwerk he had brought from Germany and normal human state is silence, actors should pop up out of perfected into a meticulously choreographed multimedia event. silence and go back to it. Efros wrote of the production, "The Simultaneously, Chagall used the opportunity to impose on the best places were those in which Granovskii executed his system theater his vision of a grotesque, tragicomic Jewish world, of 'dots' and the actors froze in mid-movement and gesture, disappearing yet brimming with vitality. from one moment to the next. The narrative line was turned In the cold winter of 1920, as civil war raged in the Soviet into an assembly of dots."" But this was contrary to the usual Union and as the center of power moved from Petrograd to conception of theater as a three-dimensional, dynamic art. Moscow, rehearsals went on and Chagall painted in a fury. The Efros shrewdly understood the problem: Yiddish Theater was located on Bol'shoi Chernyshevskii Lane in central Moscow, in the nationalized house of a Jewish The wholeness of the spectator's impression was complete. When the businessman, L. I. Gurevich. Gurevich, who apparently fled curtain rose, Chagall's wall panels and the decorations with the actors after the Revolution, had built the three-story mansion in 1902 on the stage simply mirrored each other. But the nature of this ensemble and lived with his family on the second floor. (Stars of David was so untheatrical that one might have asked, why turn off the light still embellished the tiles of the corridors when the troupe in the auditorium, and why do these Chagallian beings move and moved in; fig. 17.) The second floor, including the large speak on the stage rather than stand unmoving and silent as on his reception room and some adjacent spaces, was turned into a canvases. '" theater that held ninety seats. The actors were given living quarters in the same building. The stage and the walls mirrored each other because Aleksandr Tairov, the director of the Russian Chamber Chagall used images of the actors for his painted carnival.

Theater, had promoted a new perception of the artist's Chagall wouldn't abide by the traditional three-dimensionality function: rather than painting the backdrop decoration alone, of the theater any more than he would limit himself to two the artist constructed the whole, three-dimensional stage. But dimensions in painting: within a demonstratively two- Chagall went beyond even this radical notion, embracing the dimensional surface he rendered figures as both two- and three- entire auditorium in a Chagallian painting ensemble. Within dimensional. And, as we see in his murals, two-dimensionality forty days," working singlehandedly, he painted a twenty-six- itself is often presented in a multiplanar perspective. If some foot-long canvas. Introduction to the Yiddish Theater (cat. no. i); figures seem to move in and out of his painted world, it is a four tall images of the Arts (which contributed to the new fulfillment of his larger conception: his own wife and child theater according to Granovskii's conception): Music, Dance, peep out from between two flat color stripes in the Introduction, Drama, and Literature (cat. nos. 4-7); a long frieze. The Wedding and the major figures of the painted theater leap above

Table (cat. no. 3); and an almost translucent square image. Love geometric space altogether. The actors, to Chagall, merely on the Stage (cat. no. 2). In sum, the murals covered all the provided another degree of animation in a two-and-a-half- dimensional space. Nevertheless, Efros concluded, "[Chagall] never understood that he was the clear and undisputable victor, fig. 8 and that, in the end, the young Yiddish theater had struggled

Dc/^?/'/ r;/ Introduction to the Yiddish Theater (cat. no. i). because of this victory."'^

Chagall's Murals I 29 9

Introduction to the Yiddish Theater: The multiplanar canvas:

Let us first walk into the auditorium as it was and then return to the history and nature of that tragic Yiddish Theater. As we enter the theater and look at the huge mural to our left, Introduction to the Yiddish Theater, a powerful, sweeping

movement carries us forward; yet the movement is constantly impeded by groups of figures, bizarre activities, and ever-

changing painterly events, making it a long journey indeed. In most of his paintings, Chagall's figures hover over the depicted

scenery, but here there is no such setting at all, no houses,

streets, town, or stage. The authority of space is transferred from the fictional world to another stratum, the geometric areas formed by Suprematist-like stripes and Orphic-like circles. Colorful figures float on this spaceless canvas, brought together in three functional groups: the management of the

theater, the musicians, and the comedians. The painting is framed on each side by a cow and a human figure in a red shirt, and many smaller groups, individuals, and vignettes appear throughout the painting. Within each human grouping, there

is no realistic space but rather a conceptual conjunction that

unites them. We cannot imagine, for example, an act//aI scene

in which Chagall, touching Granovskii with his palette, is

carried in Efros's arms while a midget serves tea to the trio. It

is rather a realization of the dead metaphor, "Efros brought Chagall to Granovskii."

Basically, the composition is organized in three circles with

fig- margins on either end. The circles increase in diameter from

Detail 0/ Introduction to the Yiddish Theater (cat. no. i). left to right, and their upper arcs rise from a distance of about one quarter below the top of the canvas to the very top. In addition to the circles, there are conspicuous stripes and triangles, with well-defined boundaries, as well as lines,

segments, and radii, all of which overlap the circles. From the Suprematists, Chagall learned the value of abstract geometric

figures, defined in sharp outlines as if made by a ruler, and usually monochromatic. The geometric forms he used in the Introduction enabled him to hold such a long work of art together. For years afterward, he was proud and jealous of this achievement. He attempted another massive composition in

the long "political" quasi-mural The Revohition (1937); yet he

had to cut it into several parts, for he could not handle the unity of a painting larger than the length of his arms — until the grills of his stained-glass windows, which he designed later

in life, resolved the problem. The use of Suprematist elements in the midst of this lively

work is, of course, a profanation. Malevich sought to achieve "a 'desert' in which nothing could be perceived but feeling," the rediscovery of pure art not "obscured by the accumulation of 'things.'"'" And along comes Chagall, using a complex structure of geometric figures as a ground ioT his human figures to walk on!

One of the first things that strikes us is the strong black diagonal stripe at the center of the canvas. We recognize this gesture in other post-Revolutionary paintings by Chagall as the realization of his name in Russian, which means "he

strode." (Maiakovskii came up with a rhyme: Shagal I Shagal,

"He strode / Chagall.") To the left of this black diagonal, and

parallel to it, is Efros's footless black leg. In the right half of the painting we have a parallel move: the faint, pastel stripes, although oriented downward, are stacked so that as a band of colors they also move upward in the same diagonal. Indeed, if

we look at all the precisely organized diagonal stripes and lines, we see that a huge flattened "W" underlies the composition, uniting the canvas — circles, people, and all. The movement

upward and forward is further reinforced by the band of human figures that occupies precisely half of the height of the mural

and moves slowly from its lower to its upper half. This colorful

30 Benjamin Harshav band represents the theater, whereas the paler images and (for example, Mikhoels's blue shirt in the center of the mural;

vignettes all around it represent Chagall's fictional and fig. 9), but most figures have three-dimensional characteristics, personal world. either through their rounded bodies or through cubistic

A Yiddish inscription is written on top ot the first circle formations of body and clothing (for example, Chagall's yellow

with "square " Hebrew letters. It is conspicuously placed above suit). From group to group, perspectives are often inverted — the red arc that brings together the three dominant figures of for example, some miniature figures (implying that we are

the theater: artistic director Efios, painter Chagall, and director seeing them at a distance) appear not beyond but before the larger

Granovskii. To understand it, we must turn first to a study for figures. The same ambiguity permeates Chagall's treatment of

the Introduction (cat. no. 8). On it, these words read: EFROS time. Preparations for the theater, performances themselves, as IKSVONARG LAGASb. (Inscriptions on the murals are well as reminders from the Jewish religious and folkloristic

rendered here in bold type; when the inscription is in inverted past are all presented simultaneously. In a typical

Yiddish, it is rendered in bold italic type.) The first surprise is postmodernist gesture, Chagall thus blurs the boundary

Efros's name, which, in Hebrew, is usually spelled (consonants between object-language (describing the presented objects) and only) APRT; but here we have the new Soviet Yiddish spelling, metalanguage (describing the painter's language and himself). with all its vowels, EFROS. His name and revolutionary stride In sum, space, time, and perspective are all evoked in the underline the message: Energy! Revolution! (In the state? In painting and are presented in discontinuous, disrupted bursts.

the theater? In painting?) The other two words look like total The spectator's position is not taken for granted either. Chagall gibberish, a collection of Yiddish letters; only if we read the was furious that chairs were placed in the auditorium, thus text letter by letter, in the opposite direction (as if it were fixing the place of the spectators. Apparently, he wanted them Russian), can we decipher the names ShAGAL GRANOVSKI. to go back and forth from mural to mural. The spectator's On the final canvas, however, the names are distorted distance needs to be variable: to grasp the whole, one must further than on the study. Ot LAGASh, all that remains is stand at a distance; to understand the activities of the social

, . . AG . . . Sh, with vestiges of something in between; and groups, one needs a middling view, far enough to absorb one even EFROS has only EF . . . S, with paler outlines of the rest. third of the canvas but close enough to recognize the figures; Inside the words, however, in place of missing letters, there are and to read the minute inscriptions and embroideries, one tiny drawings, of Chagall painting at his easel and of the must press one's nose up to the canvas.'" professorial Efros reading a book. Thus, Chagall combined two The Introduction is characterized by a gay celebration of systems, letters and ideograms, to represent people. The colors; some are bold and saturated (in the left half of the strangest distortion is of Granovskii s name: instead of the painting), some are pale and ornamented (mostly toward the inverted IKSVONARG, as it appears on the study, we read right), some are subtle. Color, though almost entirely IKTIKTUNARG on the mural. Chagall often erased parts of a subordinated to the boundaries of the figures and geometric written message (as he deleted parts of a human body), but bodies, occasionally revolts against the domination of spatial rarely (if at all) did he add to a written word. Perhaps because form: the yellow on the margins of the middle circle flows over he was fed up with the theater director, Chagall began the geometric boundary into the space above, where it becomes distorting his name from the Yiddish side. In Yiddish, "S " is a background for the little sketched figures; similarly, in the

close to "T " and easily changed; IKT could indicate the initials lower-right triangle the diffuse orange, though contained in of Idish Kamer Teatr"' and is repeated twice. To squeeze the geometric boundaries, permeates the fiddler, bird, and longer text into the allotted space, the beginning of the word synagogue in the background, as if merging all the on the Yiddish side was given in much smaller letters (the disproportionate objects in one level of color and depth; and in study has them all of the same size). When writing from both the lower-right corner, several colored stripes cover the directions, the beginning o( GRAN{ot'ski} meets the double indecent scene of a boy urinating on a pig.

" IKT, leaving a small space. Hypothetically, the thin letter "U Thus, each major stratum of the painting is subordinated to was the only one that would fit into the space; this may be yet other strata in parts of the canvas and asserts its independence another game of Chagallian deformations. in others. Where one stratum is interrupted, another takes Inversions and mirror-images of words were in fashion; over. The general principles of Chagall's art apply to the indeed, the Russian Futurists boasted of having invented murals: several stylistic strains may interact in one figure or pereiirtni (inverted rhymes). Yet Chagall's unusual spelling, texture; several figures may overlap partially; deformation or with most letters arranged from left to right, indicates the distortion may act on any established figure or artistic stratum; direction of the reader's walk along the canvas toward the disproportion of the sizes of figures is universally accepted; and stage. It may also indicate the new, European direction Yiddish any surface of one thing may become the background of culture was taking.^' Chagall, himself a Jewish intellectual another. moving into general culture, sometimes signed his name in The paucity of means available to Chagall in the winter of two directions simultaneously: MARC LAGASh — first name 1920 is obvious, but he used anything he could lay his hands in French letters, last name in inverted Yiddish — or even on. The mural was painted on thin Dutch bedsheets sewn

MRAC, with the "M" and the "C" in Latin letters and the together, with a poorer lining behind it. He used gouaches as "AR" in inverted Yiddish. The names on the mural thus signal well as kaolin with paint and water^' (in several cases, he left the viewer's eyes to move in the direction of the stage and in the dripping or mopped-up paint stains as part of the texture),

the direction of Russian culture.^' sawdust, and pencil; he dipped lace in paint, pressed it to the

canvas, and then removed it, leaving its impression in some The circus of intersecting circles, stripes, sections, and areas of the canvas (for example, on the dress of the female

triangles acts as the ground under the figures. It also usurps dancer), and drew similar tiny patterns with a brush. the role of perspective. Chagall painted little figures that emerge from between the planes, thus creating depth between The art of comedy

them. As a result, the flat surfaces, used in Modernist art to Chagall's surrealist perception of both art and life, his turning

emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas, here create a away from the realism and psychologism that still reigned in multiplanar perspective. the Russian theater, his unsentimental emphasis on the vitality Some parts of the individual figures look like paper cutouts of traditional Jewish folk culture — these traits infected the

Chagall's Murals 31 j spirit of the theater and influenced its later achievements. The Yiddish writer Dovid Bergelson wrote that he welcomed the Russian Revolution but did not know how to write "proletarian" fiction — although he knew exactly how the Jewish bourgeois puts his slippers under his bed, he had no idea what the proletarian would do (indeed, there were no Jewish proletarians yet, and they had no slippers). This was a general problem of the new Soviet Russian theater and of literature as well; plays that promoted the new society were sloganeering and vacuous, for they did not embody any real society, any specific, concrete world. The importance of Chagall's role in the theater lay in his embracing the genre of the carnivalesque (as later formulated by the Russian cultural critic Mikhail Bakhtin), the topsy-turvy world that had

reigned in medieval fairs. It was precisely through the carnival that Chagall was able to introduce the old, subverted world as a real, tangible substance of a work of art. This enabled the

theater to fill its productions with a fictional world populated by rich archetypes, flesh-and-blood popular characters, widely shared jokes, and an inimitable and endearing language. And although these characters were grotesque and out of touch with reality, they also were inspired by flights of fantasy and poetry, and by an ahistorical sense of an absurd and comic human dignity. By turning that fictional world upside down, Chagall saved

it. Later, the Yiddish Theater could be either sentimental or politically obnoxious and rudely critical, even anti-Semitic fig. lO (showing the "Yid" in full bloom, as Efros described it^); yet

Detail of Introduction to the Yiddish Theater (cat. no. i). the tangible existence and vitality of the lost Jewish world was preserved, and resounded in the minds of the viewers, even gentiles or assimilated Jews in Russia and in Western Europe.

There was no narrative, only a "world" — and it could be reproduced with plotless plays, characters with no psychology or grounding in reality, and dialogue with no subtlety. The leap that Jewish literature, art, and theater made from a medieval carnivalesque or comedic art to the age of Revolution

— leapfrogging realism and psychology — made it seem fresh and Modernist. In this sense Chagall learned a great lesson from his new understanding of the master. Chagall wrote, "I was angry at the small town guys who read Sholem Aleichem

and laughed all the time just for the sake of laughing. I, on the contrary, didn't laugh so much and thought that Sholem

Aleichem was a 'Modernist' in art."^' Chagall may have been

influenced by his first accepted theater work in the Petrograd cabaret Comedians' Resting Place, but Sholem Aleichem's

influence is unmistakable. Chagall promoted awareness of the Jewish folk tradition, which has no language of tragedy. Entertainment and folk literature are fragmentary, anecdotal, joking, melodramatic,

with no narrative or continuous structures; this is the mode of comedy. The traditional Jewish world, fictionalized in Yiddish literature, could be resurrected on the Soviet stage as an entertainment only in the genre of comedy. Chagall's perception prevailed. In 1919-20, the Yiddish

/ players still called themselves "actors" and attempted serious drama; after Chagall and Sholem Aleichem, they called themselves "comedians." For fifteen years they did not approach serious tragedy. Mikhoels's stunning success as King Lear in 1935 was the victory of a comedian turned tragic actor.

Unlike graven images, theater is not forbidden in the Bible.

Rather, the prohibition against it in Jewish tradition stems from a ban against the Hellenistic entertainment enjoyed in Palestine in the early centuries of the common era. But comedians and clowns were not considered part of theater. Indeed, the European Renaissance concept of "comedians" enjoyed a long tradition. In Yiddish, they were called Purim-

shpiler, komediantn, also derogatorily Knmeciyanshtshikes . A later version of the Sholem Aleichem Evening was titled A Spectacle of

Comedians. Chagall's Introduction is a manifesto for that

antirealistic, antitragic art.

The Introduction is, in general, a celebration of Jewish culture and a vindication of Jewish dignity. As Chagall proudly wrote in his Leaves from My Notebook, "I am too shy to say what

this little nation can show," implying primarily that it could produce great, universal Art (through Chagall himself), as

earlier it had produced Christianity and Marxism. Radical Jewish vignettes appear on the right margins of the work. In

the upper-right corner, an adult is being "Jewified " — we can clearly see the circumcision tool. In the lower-right corner a circumcised (and therefore Jewish) boy urinates on a pig — a

gesture of defiance against the Christian world (fig. lo). It is as though Chagall were saying, "We will produce art in spite of

all our enemies" (in Yiddish, a triumphant stance, meaning "we shall overcome," has this formulaic addition, oyf tselnkhes ale sonim)f Having painted this scene of defilement, he covered

it over with three bars. Chagall was extremely ambivalent about the Jewishness of his art, and actually caused a small scandal when the management of the theater refused to open the auditorium as an exhibition to the general public; he argued that his art was being seen only by the hundred Jews who came to the theater, while he wanted a wider audience composed of many nationalities.''^

Interpreting the large mural The literary-minded viewer would attempt to "explain" each detail in the mural and the intentions and messages Chagall inscribed in them. But if we succeed in doing so, why do we need a painting at all? The observation of the fine Russian

scholar Boris Zingerman is closer to the truth:

In many paintings, he naively and insistently demonstrates his

encyclopedia, ''the world of Chagall" : the sight of his native Vitebsk, next to it the sight of Paris, a wooden grandfather clock, a fish, a sled, lovers, a fiddle, patriarchal relatives, domestic animals, candleholders

and acrobats. . . . In vain are the attempts to provide a univalent, rational or symbolic interpretation of Chagall's recurrent poetic images,

reading them as a combination of signs, a rebus one can decipher. . . . Chagall's paintings are dominated by the magic ofatmosphere, the mystery of a subtext you can never transform into a text.''^

And yet, a few specific observations are necessary in order to gain access into this Chagallian world.

In the first group of figures on the left, the artistic director Abram Efros brings Chagall to the theater, and Chagall offers

his palette to the director Granovskii (fig. ii). The German- educated, serious Granovskii wears a formal tie and jacket, but his legs perform a quadrille, a gesture indicating that he

accepts the notion of merriment. The midget serving tea fits Chagall's description of the janitor Ephraim, who served

Chagall milk mixed with water. ^'' Behind Chagall is a red background, covered with thin outlines of synagogue art, including the stone tablets (only four of the Ten Commandments are indicated here — by their first or last figs. II-I2

words: no, no, no, no!), a lion and other ornaments, and a bimah Details r;/" Introduction to the Yiddish Theater (cat. no. i).

(synagogue platform) drawn as if it were a Constructivist stage. Four figures in the center enact the only traditional Jewish

art: music. Indeed, the group is a kapelye of klezmers (a band of musicians), directed by the cymbalist, who resembles the theater's first composer. Lev Pulver. The musicians are actors.

This is a realization of a metaphor: in Yiddish, zey shpiln means both "they play music" as well as "they perform in a play." A

goat, Chagall's representative (it was also painted on the curtains), opens the performance. The bodies of the actors are deformed in a Chagallian manner, limbs scattered in space.

Chagall's Murals I 33 One can recognize specific actors of the Moscow theater. Menakhem-Mendel). To the right, Chagall, in a hat and sitting Ironically, they all wear hats, to indicate that they act as a on top of a thin branch, welcomes his parents. The building in traditional Jewish group (the secular actors of the Yiddish the orange triangle resembles a traditional grave; the Yiddish

Soviet theater certainly didn't cover their heads indoors). inscription P N, which stands iov po riikbar {here lies) is While the theater managers are bare-headed, the hats worn by accompanied by the letters T A (for Yiddish Theater, in

the figures in the second and third groupings indicate the reverse, Russian order). To the left, someone is being kicked in enactment by a secular culture of its religious past. his mouth and silenced (bringing to mind the Yiddish

A basic problem existed for modern Jewish artists: how expression fa rshtop ini dos moil, stop his mouth, i.e. shut him

should secular Jews, who look like everybody else, be up) — could it be Malevich?

represented? In Jewish literature, the problem was solved by This edifice is echoed at the top center by the silhouette of a locating every story in the shtetl, though the writer and his temple (it also bears the stone tablets), perhaps alluding to readers no longer lived there. The shtetl was the prototypical Granovskii's conception of the Yiddish theater as "a temple of

locus of Jewish iconography, with its distinctive and separate shining art and joyous creation — a temple where the prayer is

garb, milieu, and discourse. The painter, too, had to mark his chanted in the Yiddish language."" This, too, is welcomed by a secular Jews with emblems of the religious world. Thus, the happy Chagall figure, also with an umbrella. revolutionary actors wear hats, and the cymbalist wears a We also notice elements of Chagall's shtetl, lovingly drawn

Jewish kapote (long coat), though it is light blue rather than the on Mikhoels's white belt, which is decorated with a lace fringe.

traditional black. And the smallest treasure of all: on the flutist's only leg, above With the same logic, in the next major grouping on the the black vertical and horizontal stripes, there are

right, a Jew is depicted with philacteries on one arm and on his Yiddish/Hebrew inscriptions, written in childish, clear, forehead, indicating that he is in the most solemn moment, in unconnected longhand letters, listing Chagall's immediate

mid-prayer (fig. 5). But he stands on his hands, head down, like family: feyge ite [mother] yhzkl [father, in Hebrew] /

an acrobat! On his belt is an inscription in childish, longhand mshe [Marc's Hebrew name "Moyshe"] blanh ["Bella-Anna"

Yiddish letters: ikh balavezekh ikh (I play pranks, frolic, am — Anyuta] / roze mariyaske [sisters] / dovid [brother] zisle

naughty, mischievous, have fun.)^° His neighbor, wearing a [sister Zina] leyke mane [the twin sisters Liza and Manya] /

skullcap, has written on his belt, in the same childish longhand berte [his wife Bella, by her Yiddish name] ide [daughter Ida] /

letters: ikh bin akrobfat) (I am an acrobat). There were no mnahem mendl [grandfather, spelled half in Hebrew, half in

acrobats in the Yiddish Theater; Chagall inserted them as his Yiddish]" ba [unfinished] / basheve [grandmother'"] avrhm way of indicating the upheaval of the old Jewish world and the neyah [uncles Abraham and Noah] ." For the most part, these entertainment achieved in the meantime. are Hebrew names, spelled in a half-Yiddishized way, as they In the same grouping, an actor in a different kind of play are pronounced; some are spelled with Russified forms. points his gun, in a theatrical gesture, through the twisted legs On the far left, we find several isolated vignettes within of the praying acrobat. This may well be Uriel Acosta, the hero Suprematist spaces. The art historian Ziva Amishai-Maisels of the German playwright Karl Gutzkow's drama by that speculates that the upper vignette represents the isolation of

name, which was one of the first plays performed by the theater in its first year in Petrograd, where Granovskii Granovskii's theater in Petrograd and revived in Moscow "talked to the lamp" (a Yiddish idiom meaning "gets no shortly after the Sholem Aleichem Evening. Uriel Acosta response"), for there were no Yiddish-speaking masses in that

(1585-1640) was a converso born in Portugal who moved to city.'" The image below is of a worker waiting to applaud — in Amsterdam, where he underwent circumcision and returned to Moscow, closer to the Pale, Jewish working people, NEP Judaism. He wrote an antireligious book, was excommunicated tradespeople, students, and government officials were then by the rabbis, recanted, and eventually committed suicide with streaming into the city. a pistol. The figure (depicted with different attributes on his The most puzzling images are of a cow and red-shirted left and right sides), the pistol, and the circumcision scene to person on both ends of the painting. One possible

his right support this conjecture. Uriel Acosta was seen as a interpretation is that the green cow, with its aggressive horns, hero by secular Jews who wanted to be cosmopolitan, both represents Chagall's art, forcefully entering the situation. (In Jewish and antireligious at the same time. the painting Literature we see a similar animal, mooing Several more actors crowd behind the acrobats (the woman "Chagall" in Yiddish.) Indeed, Chagall favored green: his face

has been identified as the actress Sara Rotbaum, the man with in / and the Village is green; so is the face of the fiddler in AI//wV; jacket and tie as Benyomin Zuskin). Behind Rotbaum, we see a in his earlier work for the Petrograd cabaret Comedians' newspaper clipping with printed headline letters, YIDISHE Resting Place, Chagall painted the faces of all the actors green;

K[amer], and, perpendicular to it, [tea}TR," superimposed on he used the green cow as his emblem in revolutionary Vitebsk; an old newspaper with the word BAVEGUNG (movement, and in the Introduction, the circle in the center, which focuses

usually used for a political or cultural trend). the "play" around it, is a saturated green.

The middle acrobat has a list of great Yiddish writers stuck Who, then, are the attending figures? The figure doing a

between his legs (fig. 12): Mend[ele-]Abramovitz Peretz split on the left, according to the account of Chagall's son-in-

Sholem Aleichem Bil [Bal-Makhshoves?] [Der] Nis[ter]. The law, is Mikhoels, with the attributes of folk art and play- first three — Mendele Abramovitz, Y L. Peretz, and Sholem acting. He welcomes the menacing, powerful Chagall; this fits Aleichem — are the "classic" trio of modern Yiddish literature, in with the various accounts of Mikhoels's sudden conversion

all of whom died during World War I. The last two, hesitantly to Chagall's conception and art, and his subsequent influence indicated, are Yiddish writers of Chagall's generation: Der on the whole troupe in this direction. Below, a shofar blower Nister, who wrote a children's book that Chagall illustrated, emerges from a wooden synagogue ornament, heralding and and his friend the Yiddish literary critic Bal-Makhshoves (Dr. welcoming the newcomer.

Elyashev). Dr. Elyashev also appears near the bottom of the The red-shirted man at the far right is not necessarily the canvas, directly below the gun-holding actor. Together with same as that on the left — their hats, noses, and chins are Bella Chagall and daughter Ida, he greets Marc, who comes different. His feet are in water, a method used by rabbinical

down to them under an umbrella (perhaps it is the ubiquitous scholars to relax or to keep awake when studying late at night. umbrella carried by the Sholem Aleichem character With his visor hat, he may be a worker, representing the

34 Benjamin Harshav proletarian audience for which, presumably, the theater was The difference between Picasso and Chagall may be performing. Or could the figure at the right be Granovskii, compared to the ciiffercnce between tragedy and comedy. resting in satisfaction at the feet of the calmed cow? In this Picasso presents the Aristotelian unities of time, space, and

case, the chicken legs under the board on which Granovskii sits action; Chagall displays a plurality of all three. The genre of

may indicate that his enterprise is precarious — it stands on comedy does not require one purposeful action, but rather

"chicken legs," as the Yiddish idiom would have it. He seems prefers anecdotes, immediate effects following each other. It is to be satisfied with the cow that now rests, topsy-turvy like the the heroic gesture of a Spaniard and a Communist versus acrobats, after having charged in and revolutionized the Jewish Utopian hope and self-irony. theater. The different social purposes and cultural backgrounds of the two artists account for the different conception of the Chagall's Introduction and Picasso's Guernica whole, yet in both murals we can see the stocktaking of several In many ways. Introduction to the Yiddish Theater plays a role in waves of Modernism and the political urge of the artist to go Chagall's oeuvre similar to that oi Guernica in Picasso's. Both beyond the problems of art itself Both plunged into the work are murals, made by invitation of a central cultural body of with extreme intensity. There was also a practical difference: their respective cultures, both of which were in "diaspora" Picasso had time and could afford to make dozens of sketches (Picasso's was commissioned in Paris in January 1937 by the and choose any materials that suited him, while Chagall had a Spanish government in exile). Both were made for a public paucity of time and materials at his disposal. purpose, expressing a political and cultural position. Neither Chagall nor Picasso were overtly political artists, but both The four Jewish muses, a wedding feast, and eagerly responded to a public invitation and mobilized their Love on the Stage entire stock of images for the purpose, and the commission The four paintings that hung to the audience's right in the became a quintessential encyclopedia of their previous work. auditorium represent the four "Jewish muses." The Russian For Picasso, in the midst of a period of stylistic hesitation, invitation to the exhibition of Chagall's murals called them the commission gave new motivation to the use of his "Music, Dance, Drama, Literature," but Chagall, in his "Yiddish techniques. For Chagall, after a brief and stormy period of memoir on his work in this theater, published in 1928,^'' called propaganda painting in Vitebsk, it also came at a crossroads. them "klezmers, a wedding jester, women dancers, a Torah Picasso's mural was a summation of major artistic trends, in scribe" — traditional Jewish professions, which may be his case Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and grasped as the folk origins of the new Jewish arts. political art. In Chagall's mural, various contradictory trends The four traditional professions depicted here are part of are also brought together, but in a pluralistic balance; in Yiddish rather than Hebrew culture. Even the Hebrew Torah

Picasso's painting they are fused within each figure. Picasso's scribe in Literature is transformed into a secular figure: on his organic perception of art versus Chagall's dazzling market-fair scroll he has written amol iz {geven} — "once upon a time," display is manifested in their color schemes as well: Picasso's the conventional opening of a Yiddish folktale. Above the painting is almost monochromatic, while Chagall's is a scribe, a cow moos "Chagall" (with an inverted, Russian- celebration of many colors and hues. directed "L"), while above a small figure carries a chair Both artists use the irrational, nonverbal, and empathic inscribed Der T{eatr} (the theater). The badkhan (wedding power of animals: in Picasso's vision it is the Spanish bull jester) makes everybody cry or laugh with his improvised (representing Picasso himself) and the heroic horse-cum-statue, grotesque, and often bawdy, rhymes. The dancing woman, while in Chagall's it is the green cow (also self-representative) wearing a flowery peasant dress, dances to the Hebrew and such shtetl animals as goats, chickens, and fish. wedding song kol khosn. kol kale ("the voice of the groom, the Both artists confronted a similar task of organizing a large, voice of the bride"), inscribed on the hem of her dress and unwieldy mural. Picasso's is slightly more than twice as long as outside it, which is also part of a Yiddish ceremony. it IS wide, whereas Chagall's is almost three times as long. As Above the four Arts hung a long frieze. The Wedding Table. Rudolf Arnheim has pointed out, "Picasso prevented the It consists of two halves painted as mirror images — though composition from falling to pieces by the symmetrical one is turned upside down. The Hebrew inscriptions on it read correspondence of the flanks — the bull at the left, the falling kosher le-pesakh (kosher for Passover) and carmel (wine from woman at the right — and the roughly equilateral triangle Eretz-Israel, a Zionist element naive Chagall was unafraid to culminating in the oil lamp.*^ Chagall's mural was longer and use in the Soviet Union). The food, however, is not part of a could not be integrated in one pyramid; hence his use of the Passover meal — it has no specific Passover dishes and includes "W" and the three semicircles as an underlying structure. challah (a festive Jewish food, but forbidden on Passover). There are additional devices to unify the murals. In both, a During Passover and the Sabbath, the richest meals in Jewish dynamic pulls the viewer with it. As Arnheim notes, "Any life are served, hence their symbolic value for this wedding

compositional movement toward the left . . . runs against the celebration. Chagallian creations, such as a humanized fish and tide, because for psychological reasons the observer's glance a gymnasium student (in uniform) are also served, along with a proceeds freely from left to right whereas it is impeded in the live chicken. opposite direction."*'' In Picasso's mural, there is a "movement It is tempting to assume that the murals are indicative, in a

of the wave of figures . . . directed toward the bull" (on the very general way, of the three skits to be performed here: the left), counteracting the normal, rightward current. In Chagall's four musicians are "four agents," the acrobats perform "a lie" mural, on the contrary, the basic movement is from left to (the actual "lie" in the dialogue is the real truth, only turned right. It is plausible, however, that Arnheim's psychological upside down), and the wedding feast represents the double rule applies only to cultures writing from left to right; the wedding at the culmination oi h\azel Tor.

Jewish viewer, who writes from right to left, would have felt a Across from the stage is a painting that is atypical for tension while viewing Chagall's mural. There are similar Chagall, and is known by a poetic title, l^ove on the Stage. images bracketing both works: a powerful cow or bull Painted in airy hues, mostly shifting between gray and silver, it dominates the leftmost parts of the canvases, while a person at is composed of geometric figures with a rounded thickness the right summarizes the mood of each painting — a scream in reminiscent of Fernand Leger or early Malevich. It exhibits an Picasso's and relaxed acceptance in Chagall's. impressionistic mood superimposed on cubistic forms. With

Chagall's Murals I 35 effort, we can discern the dancing couple at the upper right, in Chagall's work for the stage a very "un-Jewish" embrace, face to face and dancing a ballet "Chagall's box" eclipsed his stage designs, yet they too were movement, as hinted by the swinging blue tights on the revolutionary. His early interest in theater decorations was

woman's legs. This is a purely secular, lyrical image. inspired by Bakst, who had asked Chagall, while he was still The socks on the man bear tiny red inscriptions in Yiddish. his student, to work on the ballet Narcisse. When Chagall

On the right foot we read K[amer] (Chamber) and AIDISh returned to Petrograd during World War I, it was the center of (Yiddish) RTAET (Theater) written in five printed letters on theater experimentation and avant-garde opposition to the

each side. "Yiddish " is written in one direction, "Theater " in finicky, decorative stage backdrops of the World of Art artists.

the opposite. Innovations in Russia were spurred by a new wave of little On the other shoe we have a more puzzling text: theaters that emerged in the decade before the Revolution. As the art historian Aleksandra Shatskikh has pointed out, "in the period of 1908—1917 small theaters of a semi-club semi-studio character developed everywhere — the so-called cellars, pubs, P Sh M Kh A cabarets, 'little stages.' The most famous of them were House of Interlude, Flying Mouse, Vagabond Dog, Comedians' Resting R L M Place."'" Chagall's first successful production design was for one of three miniatures, "An Absolutely Joyful Song," staged by O Evreinov, which opened at the Comedians' Resting Place, a cabaret, on January 23, 1917. For the play, Chagall painted the When we read the text in columns from top to bottom and faces of all the actors green and their hands blue. In this from right to left (here copied in the English direction) and establishment, the stage and auditorium were fused by one

interpolate the missing letters, we have Y. L. Peretz Shalom "unified decoration," made by S. lu. Sudeikin and others, Aleichem A T (Yiddish Theater). Some letters have faded or which might have influenced Chagall's perception of the were obscured by Chagall. artist's role in the theater.

Underlying the composition is a huge, stylized Shin (the In early 1919, he was commissioned to prepare the Hebrew letter "Sh," as in Shaday, God's name on a mezuza, decorations and costumes for two plays by Nikolai Gogol' for attached to every Jewish door frame), made of the rounded the Petrograd theater Hermitage. Gogol', with his profound

geometric arms and the red diagonal between them. We can and hilarious comedy of life, was a major literary influence on also discern, on the same level, a large "G," and in the lower Chagall. The production, however, was never realized. half of the panel, an "L." The three large cubistic letters of As Commissar of Art in Vitebsk, Chagall plunged into

Chagall's name in its Hebrew spelling, ShGL, are as subtle and revolutionary cultural activity, including founding a new

elusive as the figure of love itself. People's Art School and organizing mass decorations around One might look at the whole room, "Chagall's box," in the city for celebrations marking the anniversary of the light of Efros's understanding of Chagall and the Yiddish October Revolution. Vitebsk, at the intersection of the theater as an art sprung from nowhere, with no history or railroads from Moscow and Petrograd, exhibited a feverish

tradition, therefore an "art of three times, " encompassing its cultural activity. The Russian-speaking Jewish youth, starved

own present, past, and future.'" Indeed, the large Introduction is for culture and finally liberated, plunged into all modes of self a summation of Chagall's work as a whole, but without the expression. Among the many drama circles, the most active, dark, mystical visions of his early years and without the figures according to Shatskikh, was the theater studio of the Y L.

of old, pious Jews. It is a celebration of Chagall's and the actor's Peretz Society, named for the major Yiddish writer and

generation as they try to enact the past, to extract its folk ideologue of modern Yiddish secular culture. Recent

spirit, joy, and artistic values for the present. It is a procession scholarship has revealed that Chagall became the chief artist of onward and upward, to an unknown future, which they will a new kind of Russian theater that emerged in Vitebsk, reach by turning their world upside down. Yet they are not Terevsat (an acronym for Theater of Revolutionary Satire). facing the future, but the audience of the festival. On the Vitebsk was close to the front line of the Civil War and

right-hand wall, the past is presented, the four towering Terevsat supplied entertainment for the army as well as the

figures, looming large above their shtetl world. And on the city. It combined political propaganda with satire in a review back wall, an image of universal Love, with no specifically based on traditions of the Russian folk theater. The Vitebsk Jewish attributes, evokes a translucent, veiled vision of the Terevsat became a model for similar theaters in other cities.

future. Terevsat opened on February 7, 1919, and Chagall was its Chagall's art, in general, developed in this direction, from a only artist for the 1919-20 season. He designed at least ten fictional world grounded in the past and reclaimed by means of productions,"' including costumes, makeup, and various stage deformation — to the abstract notion of human love, as diffuse objects. In April 1920, Terevsat moved to Moscow; Chagall as the colors of his later paintings. He came to embrace the came a month later. '"^ In June 1922, Meierkhol'd became its ahistorical world of the Bible, as a humanistic vision created by director, and the theater was renamed Theater of the the Jews that will save the world from an atomic disaster.^" Revolution at the Moscow Soviet. Chagall designed one more This perception of Jewish culture entailed a foreboding of production for Terevsat, Comrad Khlestakov, a Revolutionary

''^ its own disaster. Aecular Jewish culture, to which Chagall, parody with allusions to Gogol'. Efros, and the new Yiddish Theater contributed, was imported The Yiddish Theater moved to Moscow in the fall of 1920,

from general European culture. It was a Utopian effort to create and in November, Chagall plunged into the immense project. a culture of "three times," encompassing past and future in the His stage sets were truly minimal, for lack of means and present, in one great burst of art. But secular Jewish culture material. In his costumes and stage designs we can see a

had no true past, so it had to borrow one from the religious combination of naturalistic, folkloristic, and comic perceptions

tradition; and it had no future of its own, so it borrowed one of Jewish poverty, on the one hand, and strong Constructivist

from the Russian Revolution. In Russia, it was wiped out by gestures, on the other. But unlike some of those who followed,

that Revolution itself. What remains is a heroic art that he never gave in to pure Constructivism. captured the moment of transformation. The Yiddish Theater planned to perform Sholem

36 Benjamin Harshar Aleichem's Agents while still in Petrograd. (For a translation of their names were unmentionable in their country. During the play, see pages 164—71.) Schil'dknecht designed a realistic the purges of the 1930s, the murals were hidden and suffered background of middle-class living, rich in details and colors, in damage. Somehow they arrived at the State Tret'iakov the style of the World of Art. When Chagall was assigned the Gallery — presumably in 1950 — but were not shown. For a production design in Moscow, the only aspect of time, they were hidden in a dilapidated church building that Schil'dknecht's design he took was a conipartment and a half of was used for storage. a railroad car standing at the center. He presented the double Mikhoels was brutally murdered by the NKVD in 1948; the compartment furniture with minimalist detail and unified the theater was closed in 1949, and most of its actors were put in scene with a sweeping asymmetrical arch, breaking the realistic concentration camps or liquidated along with Soviet Yiddish illusion. On top of the arch was a tiny locomotive, and an writers and all other representatives of official Soviet Yiddish inscription in Yiddish, "for smok[ers}," and, in inverted culture. How did Chagall's paintings, property of the State Yiddish, "III cl[ass}." Yiddish Theater, get to the State Tret'iakov Gallery? One

The minimalism and poverty of that first production of version has it that the Liquidation Commission gave the

Agents can be seen in a list of costumes and props required for murals to the Tret'iakov in 1950^"; another version, prevalent in the performances: Moscow art circles today, is that the last artistic director of the

theater, Aleksandr Tyshler, when he saw that all was lost,

Vovs! {Mikhoels}/ for Agents / /. Valise, hard. carried the canvases on his back to the Tret'iakov.'"' One day, I

2. Coat. 5. Briefcase. 4. Matches. 5. Letter with envelope. am sure, the Tret'iakov Gallery will disclose the truth.

6. Paper, white pages. The Tret'iakov conservators did a careful job in preparing the canvases in 1991 for "the long-distance transport firstly to

Krashinski (another actor) I for Agents / Germany, and then at a later date to other countries."™ They

/. Small valise. 2. Briefcase. 5. Cigarette case. 4. Cigarettes. did not attempt to restore the original colors.

J, Pages of white paper. The murals now display Chagall's signatures, which he applied to them on his visit to Russia in 1973. Chagall,

As late as January i, 1922, the required inventory for the stage accustomed for so long to signing his name in French, confused consisted of the following: the two languages: on the large Introduction, his signature is in printed Russian letters with the exception of the "G" from the

Green curtain (left side, right side); wooden window on stand; wooden Latin rather than Cyrillic alphabet. moon; wooden board with painting of locomotive smokestack, on stand; white bench (of railroad car); valise with cover for Yakenhoz, same for Lanternshooter; big doll (for Davidka); whistle (wooden "" instrument).

For Mazel Tor. Chagall designed a similar rounded arch and a minimalized kitchen, his emblematic goat (turned upside down) painted on the wall, minimal furniture, and several Constructivist patterns (cat. nos. 15-16). A plate above the stove has a Yiddish inscription, disintegrating into vertical and horizontal lines. The legible beginning reads ELEY, which could be either the beginning of [Sholem] Aleichem or the inverted name of the cook [B}eyle.

S'A Lign {It's a Lie) is a dialogue that takes place on a train.

An ugly story about corruption is revealed little by little, as the narrator keeps protesting "it's a lie" before uncovering another detail. Apparently Chagall's design (cat. no. 17) was so minimal and abstract that it was replaced with a set by Natan Al'tman.''^ Chagall included a home in which the roof was half removed, a boot was hanging out, and a huge pencil was leaning from the ground to the ceiling. Looming above it was a ten-story-high piece of paper and a huge pen, turned lamp, illuminating the scene. The top of the paper was imprinted with tentative headline letters HGSh (a distortion of Lagash, the inverted Chagall) and S'ALIGN S'ALIGN ("it's a lie," "it's a lie"). One of the costumes portrays a popular bluffer, with partially obscured Yiddish inscriptions on his pants; on them, we can read s'align several times, sheker (Hebrew for "lie"), parts oi sidur and talis, and perhaps the name of the corrupt rich man in the play, Shia [Finkelstein]. (For examples of Chagall's costume designs for the Sholem Aleichem Evening, see cat. nos. 18-20.)

The fate of the murals After one year, the theater moved to a larger home on Malaia Bronnaia Street, but the murals remained behind. After 1925, the murals were displayed in the foyer of the new auditorium. Chagall left the Soviet Union in 1922, Granovskii in 1928 — thenceforth, both were considered traitors, and after the 1930s

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38 Benjamin Harshav Chapter 3: The Yiddish Art Theater organization, Kultur-Lige (Culture League), devoted to Yiddish national cultural. Their program declared: The fame of the Yiddish Theater The Yiddish Theater began as a modest actors' studio in Kultur-Lige stands on three pillars: Yiddish education for the Petrograd in 1919 and moved to Moscow in 1920. By the mid- people. Yiddish literature, andJewish art. The goal of the Kuhui:-

1920S, it was one oi the most exciting companies in Russia and, Lige IS to make our masses intelligent and make our intelligentsia indeed, in Europe. On a visit to Russia, the Enghsli theater Jewish. . . . critic Huntley Carter, who wrote several books on Russian The goal &/ Kultur-Lige is to help create a new Yiddish secular avant-garde theater, said, "The work of GOSET has no equal in culture, in the Yiddish language, inJewish national forms, with the Europe.'"' And the German theater critic Alfons Goldschmidt, vital forces of the broadest Jewish masses, in the spirit of theJewish after visiting Moscow in 1925, wrote, "The Moscow State working masses, in harmony with their ideal of the future. Yiddish Theater, directed by Granovskii in ensemble with the The working field oj Kultur-Lige is the whole field of the new actors, embodies at least the beginning of something entirely secular culture: the child bejore the school and in the school, education

''' new, while the Western European theater, in its degeneration, for the young and adultJew, Yiddish literature, Jewish art. "^' looks in vain tor new forms. When the Yiddish Theater came to Berlin's Theater des The stamp of Kultur-Lige bore the inscription "Mendele, Westens in 1928, the awe-inspiring critic Alfred Kerr began his Peretz, Sholem Aleichem" — all of whom died during World essay with these words: War I and thus secured their status as the three "classic" writers of modern Yiddish literature. Theirs was sophisticated

This is great art. Great art. literature that reached the highest European standard. Deeply External image and soul-shaking. The sound of words, the sound involved in understanding Jewish existence, their work formed of blood, the sound of color, the sound of images. There are calls, voices, a dignified foundation for a modern, secular, truly Jewish questions, shouts, choruses. It is enjoyment and horror . . . and in the literature and culture. (Chagall was influenced by these three end. human communion. classic writers and included their names on the Introduction to

That is. of course, pantomime with movement into eternity. the Yiddish Theater ) Something wonderful. Kultur-Lige emerged during the Civil War, when Kiev

'^ {Great art. ) itself was shifting from one power to another. The war, and the exterminating pogroms of 1919 (when about a hundred Similar superlatives were expressed both by visitors to thousand Jews were slaughtered and several hundred thousand Russia and by theater critics during the troupe's tour of were exiled from their towns), were hard on the Kiev center;

Western Europe in 1928. After all the formal inventions of the but its ideas were shared by other centers in Russia and in the first quarter of the century, the avant-garde theater had newly re-established Poland. exhausted its innovations, and this new company seemed to With the same spirit that led to Kultur-Lige s formation, a fulfill a need at a moment of crisis. It also exemplified the new Jewish Theater Society was founded on November 9, 1916, in culture created in the wake of the Russian Revolution and as a Petrograd. The Revolution disrupted all work in the capital, result of the miraculous rebirth of the Jews. but its emerging cultural powers supported the rehabilitation The Yiddish Theater no longer exists and the "air" (as of the Jews as part of the new Soviet policy of elevating those

Granovskii would have said) of that time is very distant from oppressed by the tsarist regime. On November 29, 1918, the our own. Contemporaries of those events speak for themselves journal Zhizn Iskusstva {Life of Art) announced the in the Texts and Documents section in this book. Among the establishment of a "Yiddish workers' theater " in Petrograd, original translations we have provided are several sources on affiliated with the theater and performance department of the the emergence of this theater, its methods and significance, People's Commissariat of Education. The Jewish Theater

Chagall's role in it, early responses to and analyses of the Society implemented that decision. In February 1919, a theater theater, the theater's role vis-a-vis the lost Jewish past, and one studio was established and Aleksei Granovskii, who had of the plays performed at the Sholem Aleichem Evening. These studied in Germany and was a disciple of the famous theater documents provide a vivid image of the theater in the context director Max Reinhardt, was appointed director of the Artistic of its time, and there is no need to repeat it all here. Nor can Division. After five months of intensive work, the studio we deal here with the later history of this theater under the became the new Yiddish Chamber Theater and began conditions of Soviet political pressures and terror — a worthy performances on July 3, 1919. But Petrograd was not the best topic in its own right. We shall, however, recapitulate the place for Yiddish theater, and between July 7 and August 22, major facts and assess the key aspects of the theater's nature, 1919 the company gave performances in the nearest Jewish achievement, and destruction. center — Vitebsk, where Chagall was then Commissar of Art and director of the People's Art School. Chagall had no interest

Yiddish culture and Yiddish theater in this theater when it visited Vitebsk. Its designs were heavily Toward the end of the tsarist regime in Russia, new ideas were Symbolist, and its artists impressed him as uninteresting or coalescing among the new class of Jewish intellectuals epigones (such as the prominent but unoriginal seconci- concerning the organized creation and promotion of a full- generation World of Art designer Dobuzhinskii). fledged national culture for the more than five million Jews in During its Petrograd period, the Yiddish Chamber Theater Russia. After the February and October Revolutions of 1917, included the works of Yiddish and non-Yiddish authors alike, when Jews were granted civil rights and could move to the producing such plays as Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blind., centers of Russia, it was only natural that they tried to Scholem Asch's Sin and Amnon and Tamar, Gutzkow's Uriel implement those ideas under the new regime. Thus, in 1918, in Acosta, and A. Vayter's Before Dawn. It was an art theater that the Ukraine's capital of Kiev, there emerged an umbrella happened to perform in the Yiddish language. For lack of heat in Petrograd, the theater was closed for the 1919—20 season, yet fig. 13 rehearsals continued, giving Granovskii the chance to educate Poster from a 1^24 perfomance, in Kiev, by the Yiddish Theater. and form a well-trained and integrated troupe of an entirely Central State Archive for Literature and Art. Moscow. new kind.

The Yiddish Theater I 39 A parallel initiative was taken in Moscow. In September separate units: a School of Stage Art, to "train the personnel of 1918, the Jewish Commissariat of the Russian government actors and directors, who are totally lacking in the Yiddish

founded a theater section as part of its Education Department. theater"; a Studio, "a laboratory to develop the forms of the According to its head, B. Orshanski, the call for actors met Jewish theater"; and the Theater itself, "for the broad masses." with little response because the Jewish intelligentsia did not support the Soviet power and "sabotaged" the enterprise. For Granovskii and theater as art that reason they gathered some young and politically Aleksei Granovskii was born Abraham Azarkh in Moscow in trustworthy people, with no theater experience. Thus, an 1890. Moscow was out of bounds for most Jews, which means independent actors' studio was founded in Moscow in 1919, that his parents must have been well off and probably well

which included actors of the Vitebsk Yiddish theater studio. educated and Russian speaking (it was said that he knew no

On April i, 1920, the government authority chaired by Yiddish before he heard it from his actors).'' In 1891, all of Anatolii Lunacharskii transferred the Yiddish Chamber Theater Moscow's Jews were expelled (was this the source of his from Petrograd to Moscow. When Granovskii's theater arrived nationalist feelings?). His family settled in Riga, then the third

in November 1920 (with only eight of the original students), it largest city of Russia. Riga has a long German tradition but merged with the Moscow actors' studio as well as with some had been under Russian rule for over two centuries. There, he actors from the Vilna Troupe, a recently established Yiddish art imbibed both Russian and German language and culture, and theater. through them, the culture of Western Europe. Riga produced In 1921, Granovskii's theater was renamed GOSEKT (State such contemporary intellectuals as Sergei Eizenshtein (whose Yiddish Chamber Theater). Performances in Moscow began on Jewish father converted to Lutheranism and became the city

January i, 1921, in a hall with ninety seats and Chagall's architect), who was two years older than Granovskii. It also murals. A year later, the theater moved from "Chagall's box," produced Shloyme Mikhoels, who, like Granovskii, was born as it became known, to a larger auditorium, containing five in 1890.

hundred seats, and in 1924 it was renamed GOSET (State In 1910, Granovskii began his theater studies in St. Yiddish Theater; for a while, it was also called the State Petersburg, and from 1911 to 1914 he studied in Germany at the Academic Yiddish Theater). Munich Theater Academy, where he worked for a season under Two magical slogans guided the new Yiddish theater and Max Reinhardt. In 1917, he studied film directing in Sweden. gave it immense prestige: "theater as art" and "theater of the Back in Petrograd in 1918, he joined the new Theater of State." Finally, Jews could have an "art theater" (not unlike Tragedy, which was supported by prominent intellectuals such Stanislavskii's Moscow Art Theater) connected with the most as Maksim Gorkii and Aleksandr Blok and was devoted to advanced of the other arts — graphic art, literature, dance, promoting classical drama for the masses. There, he directed

music — and separate from the kitschy entertainment stage. Sophocles 's Oedipus Rex and William Shakespeare's Macbeth in And this theater was supported by the State itself — the Russian. He also directed two operas, Charles Gounod's Faust foreign State that had been the enemy of the Jews for two and Nikolai Rimskii-Korsakov's Sadko, and the famous thousand years — almost a Zionist vision! The Yiddish name German-language production of Maiakovskii's avant-garde for the theater sounded even better — Moskver Yidisher play Mystery Bouffe, which was performed for the Third

Melukhisher Teater (Moscow Yiddish Royal Theater). It is hard Congress of the Comintern. Then he strove to create a theater

to imagine the dignity and pride its supporters felt. Their in Yiddish. tangible hope for a new secular and elite Jewish national Granovskii and his mentors believed in the creation of culture, and the revolutionary spirit that inspired this Yiddish theater as art. The amazing Jewish cultural renaissance enterprise made those involved open to the trends of political of the preceding fifty years had been concentrated in literature revolution and the avant-garde. and ideology; they believed that to become a full-fledged In his Yiddish productions, Granovskii wanted the Jewish culture, the nation needed music, plastic arts, and theater. subject matter to represent general human values. Yet as Since theater was accepted only as an art in the most modern director of the Yiddish Theater he felt a special mission, which sense, they recognized no earlier tradition. Granovskii was to included both raising the Jewish masses to a high cultural level begin from absolute zero. and creating a national Jewish secular culture. In the archives From the Greco-Roman period in Palestine, theater was

of the theater, there is a document dating from 1920 or 1921, banned in Judaism, though there were a few exceptions: handwritten in Russian by Granovskii, describing the goals Hebrew drama was written and performed in post-Renaissance and organizational structure of GOSEKT. The first section Italy; Hebrew plays were written in the Haskala period, the reads: Jewish "Enlightenment," which flowered in Berlin in the late- eighteenth century and spread to Central and Eastern Europe; General Principles and there were entertainments in Yiddish, notably the Purim-

shpil. Nevertheless, theater in the modern, European sense was •GOSEKT is the first and only attempt to create a permanent almost nonexistent in Yiddish. Avrom Goldfaden began a performing-arts theater for the Jewish nation. Yiddish theater to provide entertainment in 1876, but in 1883

•Because ofpolitical conditions, it was hitherto impossible to the Russian government banned all theater in "jargon" establish such a theater. (Yiddish); the ban was lifted between 1905 and 1910, then renewed until the Revolution. Yiddish popular theater, •Geographically, Nioscow was selected, as the cultural and artistic primarily low-class melodrama (such as Kafka saw and admired center of the life of the whole Republic. in Prague in 1910), blossomed in London and New York, but • Unlike all other nationalities inhabiting Russia, the Jews are the Granovskii, like most Yiddish highbrow writers and cultural

only ones who have no territory of their own. activists, would have nothing to do with it. (New York's celebrated Second Avenue Yiddish theater was considered This was the succinct ideology of a political-cultural program, terrible and kitschy, degrading to Yiddish culture in America.) from which the organizational framework followed. To keep a During the 1905-10 period, when Yiddish theater was legal theater of such importance alive, one needed to train personnel in Russia, there were important beginnings: good literary and

at all levels. As Granovskii saw it, there were to be three theatrical plays were written by Peretz Hirshbeyn, Dovid

40 Benjamin Harshav fig. 14 fig- 15 Aleksei Granovskii in the 1920s. Chagall and Mikhoels, ipzi.

The Yiddish Theater I 41 figs. 16-17 Interior of the house on Botshot Chernyshevskii Lane, the Yiddish Theater's first home in Moscow, as it looks today.

42 Benjamin Hanhav Pinskii, and others; excellent actors emerged, such as Ester- lighting. But, as Mikhoels wrote, "'We could only give Rokhi Kaminski, who made a strong impact on young ourselves, the Jew ... to give the stage Man with a capital Mikhoels during her performances in Riga; and plays by "M" — this became our goal." The teaching and rehearsals Gorkii, Gerhard Hauptmann, Shakespeare, and Friedrich von were conducted in Russian, yet Granovskii learned some Schiller, translated into literary Yiddish, were performed. Yiddish from the actors' speech. A typical j'e^^t% assimilated to Granovskii and his contemporaries rejected that theater too what Jews understood as high-culture German manners, because it was individualistic, psychological, and literary. The Granovskii's ideal was silence — a state that was alien to the new regime, certainly, saw those Yiddish playwrights as talkative Eastern European Jews who were his actors and "bourgeois" writers, and Granovskii probably knew little about audiences. He taught that them; they were too provincial lor this snobbish disciple of

Reinhardt. Like Chagall, Granovskii absorbed the most recent the word is the greatest weapon of stage creation. Its value lies not only

developments in theater technique while simultaneously in speech but in silence. . . . The normal state is silence. . . . The word reaching back for its sources to the folk traditions of is a whole event, a super-normal state of man. . . . The intervals of entertainment and Komedyanshtshikes that preceded the literary silence between utterances ofphrases or words are the backgroundfrom

theater in Yiddish. which the great, meaningful word emerges. . . .

The normal state is static. . . . The movement is an event, a super-

Granovskii's system normal state. . . . Every move must start from the static state, which is

In 1918, when Granovskii undertook his mission, he announced the general backgroundfrom u 'hich the meaningful move emerges. . . . the search for candidates to train as actors. They were required A movement must be logically articulated into its basic elements as a to have had no previous experience with theater, and could not complex algebraic formula is broken down to its simple multipliers.^' be older than twenty-seven. (Granovskii himself was twenty- eight.) His selection process coincided with the political The theater performance was a work of art, a stylized selection process in Moscow, barring anybody with "Old multimedia event that had nothing to do with Stanislavskii's World" conventions or habits. Granovskii made an exception realism. Granovskii invited the ballet master B. A. Romanov

for Shloyme Vovsi, an intellectual who studied law at to teach his actors rhythmic movement, "plastics, " and dance. Petrograd University but was Granovskii's age. Vovsi had a "When all this was drilled perfectly, rehearsals began, between "monkey-face" so ugly that Granovskii found him beautiful. 150 and 250 per production. No wonder the actors who From the beginning — and under his new stage name, remained admired their director; Mikhoels called him "our

Mikhoels — he was Granovskii's right-hand man and his leader." "For us," the actor wrote, "he is the highest authority conduit to the other actors. and the last word," for "only we, the students, see what is still

In the first programmatic publication of the Yiddish hidden from every other eye . . . the work of self-sacrifice, the Theater in Petrograd in 1919, Mikhoels described the situation: love of art and the people, the rich content, filled with ideals, which his activity breathes!"''

Outside, the Revolutionary wave raged, and human eyes and too- In the State Bakhrushin Museum we find Granovskii's human thoughts, scared and scattered, blinked in the chaos of handwritten key to the scores for actors and for the director's

destruction and becoming. . . . At a time when worlds sank, cracked exposition of the play; it dates from the early twenties: and changed into new worlds, a miracle occurred, perhaps still small. but very big and meaningful for us, Jews — the Yiddish theater was I pause bom. ''' II long pause

Granovskii trained his actors ab fwo, utilizing the best 1:1 long pause and change of mood resources of the avant-garde theater. They had top Russian -> merging teachers to instruct them in music, rhythm and dance, gesture, "plastic movement," and acting techniques; they also studied word underlined foregrounding Yiddish literature, language, folklore, and folksongs intensively modulating a word with specialists. Each actor was to be a master of all theater arts and in precise command of his body and voice. The system was i end of mood /\ similar in part to Meierkhol'd's Biomechanics; it prepared the beginning of mood actors to be as agile as acrobats (the circus was an inspiration for the theater, as it had been for Meierkhol'd and Eizenshtein). Mus music

The stress fell on language, music, and folklore — a rich, music continues modern Yiddish language was an avant-garde achievement in itself — as it related to the Jewish fictional world they re- EM. end of music enacted. Mikhoels described the state of the students: Modulation of movement and voice, and shifts of mood and

dynamics, gave life to the ensemble. It was between words and

Two feelings struggled in our heart: the great will to create on movement that the art of the ensemble was located. The text, the stage in the Jewish domain and the internal doubt in our own like the actor, was treated as a means to the goal, and the powers. . . . Indeed, who were we — lonely dreamers with unclear shorter the text the better. Granovskii sought a total effect, strivings; what did we bring with us — except for oppressed and involving every move of a multimedia polyphony, and bound limbs and internal tightness, complete ignorance and helplessness involving every spectator in every move. Performances were so in stage work and stage technique — nothing. . . . Yet one thing each rich because they articulated every separate medium into a of us had — fiery will and readiness for sacrifice. . . . And our leader myriad of tiny steps, each one foregrounded anci meaningful. '' told us it was enough. The Yiddish Theater did not stage many productions, but almost every one was a true cultural event. Mikhoels noted his For Granovskii, Man was but one of the elements of a stage director's programmatic statement (made at the early studio production, along with the script, the music, the sets, and the stage):

The Yiddish Theater \ 43 / see the ensemble performance, the stage action, as a choir

action. . . . Every type, everybody's movement, everybody's acting,

playing, painting, every individual action in the play is only a

part of the architectonic whole. . . . Our artistic goal is the play as a

whole. . . . And the value and significance of the smallest role is great

in its relations to the whole dramatic construct. . . . One false performance ofa word, or a move, not just of the central figure in a play but of the smallest and most overshadowed, can corrupt and *° cheapen the whole artistic image.

This was Granovskii's theory in the first months of molding his studio. He refined this vision throughout his tenure at the Yiddish Theater. Granovskii choreographed a polyphonic and dynamic, constantly surprising stage. He was mathematically precise and pedantically meticulous about every detail. A prominent Russian drama critic and theater professional observed:

When one sees this "Jewish acting, " one cannot fail to be struck by the emotional appeal and rapidity of movement, the intensity of speech and vigor of the gestures. In its early productions, when the old repertory was being revised, poorJews in tattered garments and comical masks of rich Jews — in frock-coats and stately, old-fashioned robes with colorful trimmings — would dart and dance about on the curious platforms and crooked staircases, in an ecstasy of delight. They were the Jews of the poorer slums. They would standfor a moment in solemn stillness, like monuments, before dashing away into the hum of the marketplace, or springing from one platform to another, or rushing fig. i8 down a flight of stairs and away."' Mikhoels as Reh Alter in Mazel Tov.

The importance of language was diminished in the context of the polyphonic productions. The greatest successes of the theater occurred with audiences that hardly understood

Yiddish; many Russians attended its performances in Moscow, and German audiences perhaps understood only some of the words. A story about HaBima, the parallel Moscow Hebrew

theater that used similar sources of Yiddish folklore, though it

was still influenced by Stanislavskii's method, is telling; The actor and director Mikhail Chekhov once visited a rehearsal directed by Vakhtangov. Chekhov, who did not know Hebrew (neither, for that matter, did Vakhtangov), said to him, "I

understood it all except for one scene." Vakhtangov continued to work on that scene, and on his next visit Chekhov

understood it perfectly. The scene was not effective if you needed the words. The lack of a common language among the audience members encouraged Granovskii's virtuoso treatment of the nonverbal aspects of this Wagnerian gesamtkunstwerk. For the same reason, ideology was unimportant as well. Like Maiakovskii and Meierkhol'd, Granovskii was willing to incorporate a socialist propaganda message in whatever play he performed — what counted to him was not the message but the effectiveness of the play's impact on the viewer. Indeed, ideology was almost an excuse for producing a play. As soon as the troupe appeared in Western Europe in 1928, Granovskii was accused by Lunacharskii of neglecting socialist ideology and the theater was summoned back to Moscow. (Granovskii, fortunately, remained in the West.) The theater's greatness, however, did not rest solely on Granovskii's polyphonic approach, nor on his mathematically

calculated scores and directing. It derived rather from the fusion of his ideas with a Jewish fictional world created by modern Yiddish literature, and elevated to art by Chagall. As

in Chagall's work itself, another language was superimposed on the languages of avant-garde theater: a powerful, time-forged, fictional world, with a series of generalized but unique types. Other Russian directors of the time merged leftist art with

ideological slogans, but ideology is flimsy and transient, while

Benjamin Harshav ll^Hi pVi

^ *M*P"y^i -"^mI / ^B^^^^^^^^^^B^^^^^^^^^B ;

Krtto^^^^^BHHHB^^^^'^ 1 ^niWW^BBs fig. 19 Chagall's set for Mazel Tov.

The Yiddish Theater I 45 a fictional world with unique prototypical characters remains in 1918, his attraction to acting and his commitment to Jewish in the imagination of the spectator. The ideologies that were culture led him to Granovskii's budding studio. As an actor, attached to GOSET's productions were easily forgotten: "They Mikhoels combined his intellectual powers, a restrained went out to curse and found themselves blessing," as one critic emotionalism, and the skills he had learned under Granovskii's

put it. Indeed, such estranged semi-Jews as Osip Mandelshtam tutelage to create one celebrated role after another. The essence and Shklovskii saw in the theater's productions the vitality of his art, however, came from Chagall: the painter was the (and tragic end) of the shtetl world, and paid no attention to source of the tragicomic perception of the absurdity of Jewish the obvious Soviet message."' (and general human) existence, evoked through a This fictional world was raised to the level of a timeless demonstrative antirealism. myth through Granovskii's rhythm of "spots," which broke Almost from the beginning, the aloof Granovskii charged down the continuities of character and plot as if they were the Mikhoels with conducting the daily work of the troupe. subject matter of an Analytic Cubist painting. It was Chagall Mikhoels was stage director, and before each production he who taught him to depart from realism and continuity of space announced a competition for each role. Mikhoels read to them and time, and to embrace simultaneity of action on several from the newly published muhivolume Jewish Encyclopedia in levels (for which not Chagall, but his Constructivist followers, Russian. Mikhoels's enthusiastic "conversion" to Chagall led to prepared multilevel stages). the conversion of the theater as a whole. Under Mikhoels's guidance, the actors (all of whom came from various towns in The fictional world the Pale) recovered from their childhood memories the Chagall and Granovskii were polar opposites: the former was gestures, movements, intonations, and sensibilities of the emotional, "childish," "crazy," the very embodiment of the Jewish shtetl world. Mikhoels and his counterpart Benyomin awakening folk type from the Jewish Pale, while the latter was Zuskin (another 'Western Lithuanian) worked together to bring rational, Europeanized, German-trained and assimilated, to light the subtle connotations and gestures of the mostly silent, precise, and disciplined. They met at the very disappearing Jewish world. This was knowledge that no

beginning of the Yiddish Theater in Moscow, for a production teacher could provide; it was the source of the emotive depth of three negligible skits, yet the collision of these two willful that was then stylized and refined by Granovskii's system. originals changed the course of the theater from then on. Granovskii embraced the Jewish fictional world and integrated

One critic bluntly asked about Granovskii, "This alien Goy it into his polyphonic conception, creating theater productions will build a Jewish theater?" The program for a Petrograd that were closer to a mythological happening than to a performance of his Chamber Theater carried a notice, in half- formalist performance. German, half- Yiddish, that typifies Granovskii's attitude: Das The Sholem Aleichem Evening was based on character types p//blik//m wert geheten entzagen zikh fun aplodhnientn urn tsn familiar from Yiddish literature and folklore. The central

behalten cii gantskeyt fun ayndruk. (The audience is requested to character oi Agents is Menakhem-Mendel, a symbolic character refrain from applauding to preserve the wholeness of the based on Sholem Aleichem's book by that name, and as popular

impression.) in Yiddish discourse as Hamlet is in English. Menakhem-

Granovskii's productions in Petrograd might have been Mendel is the prototype of a shlemiel. who seesaws between perfect, but no one remembered them. It was only after soaring fantasy and searing failure. A shtetl type, he attempts Chagall's influence on the theater that its stunning effoct was all Jewish luft-parnoses (professions in the air), such as

achieved — the Sholeni Aleichem Ei'ening was performed three matchmaking {shlemiel that he is, he brings together "a wall hundred times. After Chagall's departure, Granovskii revived with a wall," a bride with a bride) and stock-market another good (and thematically Jewish) play, Gutzkow's Uriel speculation (with much the same success). Agents provides only

Acnsta, but it was a boring flop that endangered the very abbreviated glimpses of Menakhem-Mendel, but the spectators existence of the theater. Only a return to Sholem Aleichem, as were expected to know the type. Menakhem-Mendel, acted by seen through Chagallian eyes, put the Yiddish Theater back on Mikhoels, was also the central figure of the Yiddish Theater's center stage. 200,000 (based on Sholem Aleichem's The Great Winning Ticket),

The linchpin between Granovskii and Chagall was and the later version, titled simply Menakhem-Mendel . In 1925, Mikhoels. Shloyme Vovsi — Mikhoels — was born in Dvinsk, he became the hero of the film Jewish Luck, which boasted midway between Chagall's Vitebsk and Granovskii's Riga. Granovskii as director. Lev Pulver as composer, Edward Tisse Dvinsk, part of two different cultural worlds, shared foatures of (Eizenshtein's cameraman) as cinematographer, Isaac Babel as both. For that reason, Mikhoels found a common language screenwriter, Mikhoels, Zusman, and the cast of the Yiddish with and admiration for both Chagall and Granovskii. Theater as actors; even the train compartment used for the Mikhoels, one of eight sons of a rich merchant, received a stage production was adapted and became the trademark of the traditional Jewish education until the age of fifteen, and was film. steeped in Jewish learning and folklore. Like Chagall's, his Other variants of the same fictional world were brilliantly family adhered to the Byelorussian brand of Hasidism, Chabad, conceived for plays based on Goldfaden's Sorceress, Peretz's At typified by emotionalism, warmth, and joy. Both Mikhoels and Night in the Old Market Place, and Mendele's Travels of Benjamin

Chagall loved Jewish folk culture and knew it inside out. the Third. The texts were treated nonchalantly, shortened and However, in Western Lithuania, where Mikhoels was born, augmented with other works by the same authors. What a rich man's home was influenced by the Haskala and by an Granovskii kept intact were the characters and the symbolic admiration for Russian and German culture. 'When his father situations. went bankrupt, the family moved to Riga, where Mikhoels In an interview given in Berlin in April 1928, Mikhoels finished a science-oriented Russian high school. He married a formulated "the method of scenic social analysis": daughter of Yehuda-Leyb Kantor, a rabbi, doctor, tnaskil (secular, intellectual), Hebrew poet, and editor of a Russian Instead of the individual's moods, half words, halftones — explicit, newspaper in St. Petersburg, Ri/sskii Evrei (The Russian Jew). burgeoning social feelings: instead of isolated heroes with private, After being rejected by St. Petersburg University because purely subjective, limited experiences — joyful mass movements, with he was a Jew, Mikhoels studied in Kiev; in 1915, however, he their noise, their dancing on the ruins of the old, their great social was admitted to the Law School of Petrograd University. But hopes and rational activities: instead of types — social figures that

46 Benjamin Harshav (

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fig. 20

At Night in the Old Marlcet Place, designed by Robert Fal'k.

fig. 21 The Travels of Benjamin the Third, designed by Robert Fal'k.

The Yiddish Theater 47 s

convey the breadth of large human masses, of human collectives; instead set was Rabichev 's, yet this is clearly the description of a offamily conflicts, instead of'Chekhovism, " instead of sadness and Chagallian placement of characters and conception of melancholy — large social contradictions which create the background "groundless" space. Ben-Gurion was never known for his

"^ for the whole action on the stage. appreciation of literature or art, but he registered what he saw. Chagall's reading of Sholem Aleichem's authentic topsy-turvy

No doubt, part of this language was due to the fact that world is absolutely correct.

Mikhoels toed the Party hne; yet part of it was a true theatrical The German critic Max Osborn also visited Moscow in vision, which had excited European audiences. Indeed, the 1923, and on his return he wrote an essay on Chagall. He "crazy," unreal characters of classic Yiddish literature were described 200,000 in this way: social types representing a codified, stereotypical society —

which is why the theater went back to the classics rather than The curtain goes up and you see a strange chaos of houses, intertwined

dealing with the early twentieth-century Yiddish literature of in a Cubist manner, rising one above the other on different levels. individualism and impressionism. The ideological conflict was Intersecting one another at sharp angles, they either stand below wide

described by Mikhoels thus: roofs or suddenly appear without a roof altogether, like a man taking off his hat, and display all their internal secrets. Here and there, Looking for the means, how most sharply and conspicuously to uncover bridges and passways are drawn; wide streets rise andfall diagonally.

the tragic content ofpastJewish life, condemned to disappear in our Meierkhotd's Constructivist stage is embodied here in original

country, the theater showed a great diversity in evoking new stimulae variants. The Cubist, linear play of these forms is complemented and in its development. To hone the characters, to perfect the stage devices, enriched by Cezanne colors. Your eye perceives a fantastic interpretation uncover new social kernels hidden in the atrocious, often-anecdotal of a Jewish-Russian small town, presented in the narrow confines of a classical figures — this was our continuing path. Isn't tragicomedy stage in an unusually joyful and charming formula. Before the one of the phenomena typical of our contemporary epoch?'^ spectator's eye, everything can happen simultaneously: the events in the tailor shop, scenes among the populace of the shtetl who accompany the This ideological conflict, combined with the artistic tensions play and the experiences of the main characters as their own — a within the polyphonic art, produced new, hybrid genres: At picturesque, machine-like, mimic-acrobatic choir. Night in the Old Market Place was dubbed "A Tragic Carnival," When the news arrives about the tailors unexpected great win ofa The Travels of Benjamin the Third "A Touching Epic," 200,000 huge sum, setting the whole town into an unusual excitement, "A Musical Comedy," Trouhadec "An Eccentric Operetta." suddenly, high above the roof of one building, appears the figure of a Granovskii did not mind being eclectic. He harnessed any Jew with a red beard and a green greatcoat, with a sack on his back and all means of the contemporary Russian and European and a staff in his hand. Instinctively I said aloud: "Chagall!" And avant-garde theater for his new concept: a surrealist perception suddenly everything became clear: this is the world of Chagall. Prom of the fictional world of Jewish literature, refracted through the him, everything emerged: the young artist-decorator Rabichev' tragicomic and polyphonic, kinetic and musical, rationally creations, Granovskii's constructions, and the accompanying music of calculated multimedia event. A historian of the avant-garde the composer Pulver. The latter, with unusual expressiveness, embodied theater in Soviet Russia noted: Oriental motifs, ancientJewish images, and Russian songs in operatic melodies, with trumpets and kettledrums.

At the same time it is obvious from early accounts of their work that while they borrowed much from Meyerhold — his system of Later, in Mikhoels's dressing room, Osborn learned that, biomechanics, for instance — they had nothing in common with his indeed, "Marc Chagall had played a decisive role in the intellectualization of theatrical form. They held his theories but development of the whole stage art of the Yiddish Chamber expressed them with more drama and play of mood. Particularly is Theater; that, in this circle, he was considered the great this seen in their stage settings. They believed that the decor should originator and inspiration." He also learned that "Chagall's evolve images in the minds of the audiences — but they approached the box" was preserved like a temple in the "House of Yiddish mind through the senses. Their settings were always highly functional Theater Art" (as the former small theater was called). — look, for instance, at the settings for Goldfaden's The Witch,

three-dimensional combinations ofplanes, ladders and platforms It is no accident that painting exerted such an influence on the arranged in a staccato picture that stabs the mind into an awareness of stage, no whim of a theater director attracted by the work of an artist. incoherent pain. The idea of the structure is pure Meyerhold — the It was a stronger force, an inner necessity. Always, when the carrying out of the idea has the stamp of ecstasy, mystery and personality and the school of a master truly find a clear and strong unfathomable sadness. A great contribution was made by such expression for the cultural spirit of the time — the stage is captivated

expressionists as the artists Chagall and Rabichev, and later by by it — and only then it is captivated. . . . Like no one else in the Nathan Altman, Rabinovich and Talk. They lit up the stage with a young Russia of our days, Chagall has the stunning power of series of vivid pictures, always three-dimensional and mobile, which transforming the elements ofan exceedingly rich and profound artistic " seemed to have a life of their own, which harmonized with and folk culture into colorful, dreamy visions, striking our imagination. enhanced the grotesquerie of the stylized movements and which underlined the inherent colour and richness in theJewish character.'^ HaBima Monti Jakobs, the theater critic for the prestigious German This conception could almost be a description of Chagall's newspaper Vossische Zeitung, began his review of the Yiddish

art. Chagall left the Yiddish Theater after its first production, Theater's 200,000 thus: "HaBima, but joyful. The same

yet the artists that succeeded him were his admirers and intoxication as in HaBima, the sd^me furor judaicum, it is a play disciples. Moreover, the conception of the theater as a whole that pulls the spectator out of his seat and draws him into the was influenced by him, as numerous accounts claim. An strong rhythm emanating from the stage." This is not the place unexpected witness was David Ben-Gurion, who visited to discuss HaBima at length, but a few words are in order, for Moscow in 1923."^ Of the Yiddish Theater's production of the two theaters are often mentioned together.

200,000 he noted, "They sit on roofs, ledges and stairs, don't A group of young people gathered before World War I in walk but hop, don't go up but clamber, don't come down but Bialystok to create a new kind oi bima (the Hebrew word for

tumble and leap — Sholem Aleichem is unrecognizable." The "stage"; ha is the article) in order to perform in the budding

48 Benjamin Harshav ^^^^H^^^^^^^^^H .jj^riitfil^A.ih^^^^^^^^^^^^^l

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^"'^ ^-i^^^^^^^^^^^^^l

Hr^ ]

r j^^^^y^^^K^^^^^^^K * .^ .^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^1

fig. 22

Mikhoels and Chagall at thar last meeting, in New York City in 1944.

The Yiddish Theater I 49 spoken Hebrew language. In 1918, they arrived in Moscow and theater enjoyed the popularity of sports events in America. As received the patronage of the great Stanislavskii, and HaBima many reviews indicated, "Granovskii was received in Berlin as became one of the four studios attached to his Moscow Art a new theatrical messiah, a more innovative and revolutionary Theater. The young Vakhtangov, Stanislavskii's most famous director than Meyerhold, Reinhardt and Piscator."" disciple, became HaBima's director. In November 1918, GOSET traveled throughout Germany and visited Vienna HaBima was recognized as a Soviet State theater. With The and Paris, but toward the end of the year, it was forced to EternalJew, The Dybbuk, and other plays, HaBima entered return to Russia. Granovskii stayed in the West; after several

general theater history; its 1926 tour of Europe was a great unsuccessful attempts, he had success with Arnold Zweig's triumph, especially in Germany, then the center of European Sergeant Grisha. produced in Berlin in 1930, and he also made theater. several German films. Apparently, he fled Germany with the Hebrew was the language of the holy books, but during the rise of the Nazis, and faded into oblivion. On March 11, 1937, at

Modern Jewish Revolution it rapidly expanded its genres into the age of forty-seven, one of the original theater directors of secular literature, science, and politics. It was not easy to turn a the century died in Paris. At about the same time, the great language of religious texts into a spoken language, dealing innovator Meierkhol'd, who had sold his soul to the with mundane and secular topics, yet between 1906 and 1913 Communists, was tortured to death in a Soviet prison. the first Hebrew speakers emerged in Palestine. HaBima was In 1928, Mikhoels became the director of the theater. He an early attempt at speaking the Biblical language on stage enjoyed great fame in Russia and was accepted in Moscow's

(most of its own actors knew no Hebrew beforehand). Thus high society. He continued performing Jewish plays, insisting two Jewish theaters in Moscow, in two languages, emerged as that this was the task of the Yiddish theater — classical and Soviet State Theaters in the first years following the Russian plays were better performed in the Russian Chamber Revolution. Theater next door. But pressures and criticism were incessant. Soon the "war of the languages" was raging. Those who During the purges of the thirties, Stalin's brother-in-law and wanted to revive Yiddish culture in Russia saw Hebrew as a right-hand man Lazar Kaganovich came to a performance. He

religious vestige of old times, not the language of the masses.** inspired terror in the director and actors, screaming that it was

Evsektsiia (the Jewish Section of the Communist Party) battled a shame to show such crippled Jews, "Look at me, I am a Jew,

the recognition of HaBima; its leader, Dimandshteyn, claimed my father was also like this: tall, broad, healthy."'" Mikhoels that HaBima was "a whim of the Jewish bourgeoisie; the immediately started rehearsing a drama, Moyshe Kulbak's money of the Revolutionary power should not be allowed to Boytre; then Kulbak himself was arrested and liquidated and support a theater the peasants and workers don't want." But his plays were forbidden. the most illustrious Russian intellectuals of the day supported the new phenomenon in the lofty Biblical language; Gorkii In 1935, Mikhoels performed one of his greatest roles — King

and Fiodor Chaliapin wept during its performances. Leaders of Lear. In the early years of the theater, Mikhoels had recognized

the Russian intelligentsia wrote a letter to Lenin on its behalf, the tragic depths encompassed by comedy, and had described and the Commissar of Nationalities — Stalin himself — the theater and the contemporary human condition as overruled Evsektsiia and saved HaBima. "tragicomedy." Now he inverted the relationship and brought In January 1926, the Moscow State Theater HaBima all his comic experiences to bear on this tragic role. The power

departed on its spectacular tour of Western Europe and the and scope of the impact on the Russian theater was

United States.*'' Most of the troupe did not return to Russia, unforgettable.

and eventually re-established HaBima in Tel Aviv, where it During World War II, he became chairman of the Jewish became the Israeli National Theater. Anti-Fascist Committee, seeking international help in the war Both HaBima and GOSET drew on the achievements of the against Hitler. In this function, he came to the United States Russian avant-garde theater, though HaBima, still in the and saw Chagall again." But in 1948 he was sent to Minsk, Stanislavskii tradition, was more conservative and where he was brutally murdered on Stalin's order. Most expressionistic. Both derived their strength from the same Yiddish writers, actors, and activists were arrested; some were collective Jewish folk tradition, expressed in mass ensemble shot, others tortured. The theater was closed, along with the scenes and the multimedia polyphony of music, dance, sets, Yiddish newspaper and publishing house. and stage scenes. HaBima, too, was based on the Yiddish Production designs from throughout the theater's brief literary tradition (Dovid Pinski's The EternalJew, An-ski's The history were placed in the State Bakhrushin Museum in Dybbuk), but translated into Hebrew. However, the solemn Moscow. There, they were sealed in a special room along with

language of the still uncolloquial and Biblical Hebrew the archives of the Russian Chamber Theater, which was also influenced the pathos and the elevated, heroic national style of liquidated. A fire broke out at the Bakhrushin — only in this

HaBima; it did not have the humor, irony, or flexibility of room — and the set designs were burned around the margins; moods typical of popular Yiddish. Although emanating from the documents also suffered a layer of water damage. To this the same national milieu, HaBima fostered the Hebrew genre day, the causes and facts of that destruction have not been of high tragedy, oriented toward a Utopian dream, while disclosed. GOSET showcased the Yiddish genre of comedy, looking the Other documents of the theater are kept in the excellent tragic end of a culture straight in the eye. literary archives CGALI (Central State Archive of Literature

and Art), where we were allowed access to all the papers.

Epilogue However, the large files of the "Liquidation Commission" of In 1927, in recognition of their artistic contribution, the Yiddish Theater have disappeared. For the sake of the

Granovskii, Mikhoels, and Zuskin were awarded the title of martyrs, it would be an act of mercy to reveal exactly what People's Artist of the USSR. And finally, the theater was happened and how.

allowed to go abroad. On April 7, 1928, the Yiddish Theater

performed 200,000 in Berlin, where it received more than forty reviews. Its reception surpassed anything other Russian theaters experienced, and a book was published to understand

it.'" Berlin was the center of innovative theater at the time, and

50 Benjciii/m ILirsha Chapter 4: Chagall's Cultural Context included 26,590 communities, but only forty-eight of them were cities or towns with a population above 500. In the We know very little about Chagall's early years; we don't know thousands of small villages, Jews constituted only 1.9 percent his mother's maiden name, for example, or when his parents of the population (typically, village Jews were inn-keepers, mill died. My Life, his elliptical, colorful, and self-centered owners, estate managers, and artisans, but not peasants). Until autobiography, is scarce on facts and notoriously unreliable.''' 1861, the peasants in those villages were serfs, the property of Although many or most of Chagall's stories may be apocryphal, Russian or Polish landowners. Even after the serfs were granted and few specific facts are known, we can reconstruct the freedom, and until the Revolution, Russia was a rigidly class- cultural world in which he grew up." To be sure, an artist's based society. origins must not be confused with his art, especially when it is The Yiddish word .f/j^e'//"* (diminutive of shtot, "city") in as complex in its cultural discourse as Chagall's. But Western languages was often translated as "village" (in French, background does provide an essential key to its understanding. village from ville). Yet, unlike the village, the small town had Chagall worked in the modes of European painting, though his no land or peasants. In Yiddish, the concept of "village" approach was strikingly different, and that difference can be connoted something entirely different: it was a place inhabited explained to a large extent by the modes of Jewish discourse he by mostly illiterate Christian peasants, working the land with brought with him. Chagall himself understood the issue when little contact to any modern technology or industry, who would he wrote, "It I were not a Jew (with the content I put into that come to the town market, get drunk, and exhibit their physical word) I wouldn't have been an artist, or I would be a different prowess. In Yiddish, the peasants were caWed poyerim, or the artist altogether.'""' We shall try to sketch here the general synonymous goyim (gentiles). outlines of that context, focusing mainly on Chagall's Jewish Just as the English language distinguishes between genders background. The impact of Russian culture, French painting, (for example, waiter and waitress, policeman and and Modern art on his work are well known, and are not policewoman), so did the semiotics of that time distinguish repeated here. people by their social and ethnic groups. In Russian, one could not meet just a person in the street, but a peasant or a man of Empire within empire the gentry, a child, an old man, a woman, a Jew, or a Jewess. In There are many misunderstandings about the context of Yiddish, one met either a Jew or a goy, a bachelor or a virgin, a Chagall's childhood. This stems from a larger sheygetz (male gentile) or a shikse (female gentile). The Jewish misunderstanding about Russian Jewry, for there is a general stereotypes of the goy were mostly negative: he was dangerous, assumption that a Jewish religious minority existed in the dumb (someone might have a goyisher kop, "the brain of a goy"), midst of Russian culture, the equivalent of Jews in Germany in and a drunkard (a popular folksong goes: oy, oy, shiker is a goy I the 1920s or in America today. Actually, a vast Jewish "empire" shiker is er, trinket! niiz er I vayl er iz a goy, "oy, oy, a drunkard is a had developed in Eastern Europe in the midst of a huge goy / he is drunk, for he must drink / for he is a goy"). Secular cultural desert. Jewish culture tried to overcome that gulf, stressing the young

Chagall's native city, Vitebsk, is mentioned in documents as goy's closeness to nature, his health and sexuality, and the early as the eleventh century. In the Middle Ages, the city Jewish weakness in those areas; hence Chagall's idealized belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which goyish Dn/nkanl And his idealized village in / and the Village. encompassed Lithuania proper, all of what is now Belarus, parts Nevertheless, the world was seen in bifurcated categories. It of Latvia, some areas of Russia, and Ukraine. In the fourteenth was not just animosity, erupting from time to time, that century, Lithuania merged with Poland, which became the separated Jewish from peasant humanity, but a whole largest state in Europe. After the Jews were expelled from most conceptual world. of Western Europe, by the sixteenth century perhaps three The Jewish shtetl, no matter how small or unpaved, was quarters of world Jewry lived in Poland (the rest, mostly essentially an urban location, where the people did not work former Spanish Jews, lived in the Ottoman Empire). When the soil. Indeed, among the Jewish population of Vitebsk Poland was devoured by its neighbors at the end of the Province, 39 percent lived on trade and 36 percent of the eighteenth century, the Russian Empire took the largest chunk, breadwinners were artisans. In modern terms, the shtetl was including what is today central Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, the shopping mall of the area; it was a marketplace and a Lithuania, part of Latvia, as well as Bessarabia (today's center of artisan production, where peasants came to buy and Moldavia). The Russian government did not allow Jews to live sell, and from which Jews would go to peddle their goods and in Russia proper, and enclosed them in the occupied territories skills in the surrounding villages. Rich Jews also traveled to in a huge geographical ghetto called the Pale of Settlement. In the larger cities and other lands, aided by their common time, only a few thousand Jews, the very rich and educated, language, thus spreading a commercial network from the were allowed to live outside the Pale, in Kiev, Moscow, St. village to town, to Western Europe and the Russian metropolis Petersburg, or smaller cities. The Jewish masses (over five and back. million strong) thus lived among the Empire's Western In the cities and towns there were also churches and minorities, far from the centers of Russian culture and a Russian administrative and educational institutions, and Russian-speaking population. Thus, they preserved their own Christians comprised the ruling classes, such as the Russian language and culture. administration (in which no Jews were represented), Polish and

The demographic structure of Russian Jewry is revealing. Russian landowners. Christian city householders (burghers), In 1897, for example, Jews constituted only 11. 8 percent of the and even the dreaded gorodovoy (policemen).*' The provincial population of Vitebsk Province, but they accounted for 66.3 capital was also home to semiurbanized peasants from the percent of the population of all "small towns" in that Province, surrounding villages, and soldiers (mostly of peasant stock) and a majority of the population of all "cities." (The distinction stationed there. Whereas the peasants spoke Byelorussian (a between "city," "town" [shtetl], and "village" was Slavic language with hardly any literary culture before the administrative and recorded in the official Russian census.) Revolution), the language of the authorities and of the ruling This distribution was typical for Byelorussia, and, basically, for culture was Russian.

the whole Pale.'" The predominantly Jewish towns and cities Thus, the vast Jewish "empire " in Eastern Europe was based were surrounded by a sea of "villages." Vitebsk Province on a web of geographical centers, in which Jews regularly

Chagall's Cultural Context I 51 52 Benjamin Harshav constituted between half and two thirds of the population but Chagall's cheerful disposition may have stemmed from Chabad were surrounded by masses of illiterate peasants and were Hasidism's cancellation of, or obliviousness to, physical dominated by a narrow layer of the ruling classes. Jews had a existence in the name of spiritual elation. His fictional Jewish dense network of social and cultural institutions of their own, world is very different from the dour perception of the including an educational system, societies, synagogues and impoverished and degenerated shtetl that permeates much prayer houses, hospitals, cemeteries, philanthropic Jewish literature of the turn of the century. organizations, publishing houses, newspapers, community In 1897, the city of Vitebsk had only 34,420 Jews administrations, taxation, religious authorities, and political (52.4 percent of the population), yet it became an important movements (such as Hasidim) — all under the aegis of one cultural center, producing such Jewish intellectuals as An-ski, religious framework, officially separating the Jews from the Dr. Chaim Zhitlovsky, Yehuda Pen, and Chagall. The small governing Christian Orthodox Church. Contact between Jews population should not surpri.se us, for even Vilna, the and non-Jews was frequent, but on a very marginal range of "Jerusalem of Lithuania, " which claimed to be the cultural topics having nothing to do with internal Jewish culture, center of Lithuanian religious and secular Jewry, had only learning, and consciousness. Thus, the Jews were not a 64,000 Jews at the time. The Jewish population was spread minority, as they are in the West today, but a totality in their throughout Vitebsk Province, in knots of small communities, own culture and a nullity in the framework of state and and a constant flux, cultural and economic, took place between territorial power. the Provincial capital, the district towns, and the smaller Discourse in this autonomous world was conducted in three shtetls. Only 20 percent of the Jews of the Province lived in specifically Jewish languages: Yiddish was used for daily life, Vitebsk proper, and many cultural institutions were located in education, and letters to and from women; Hebrew was smaller towns such as Lubavitsh (which numbered only reserved for the Bible, the library of texts, written documents, 1,660 Jews), the residence of the dynastic rebbes of the and letters written between men; and Aramaic was the Byelorussian Hasidic movement. language of the Talmud and Rabbinic law. This extraterritorial Chagall's ancestral home, Lyozno, located about society, defined by religion, lived in a world consolidated by 70 kilometers south of the city of Vitebsk, had 1,665 Jews or the Yiddish language. In 1897, almost 98 percent of the 67.3 percent of the population. When Chagall's family moved 5.2 million Jews of the Russian Empire declared Yiddish as to Vitebsk, they lived, like many provincial newcomers, in the their language. Hebrew and Aramaic learning were embedded outskirts of the capital, and maintained contacts with the town in Yiddish and quoted in Yiddish discourse. Yiddish contained of their origin, where part of the family still lived. But theirs a folklorized universe of beliefs, stories, conventions, habits of was not the confined ghetto, far from any railroad and discourse, and oral and written literature. Yiddish separated oblivious of the changes in the world, as described in Sholem the Jews from the surrounding world, but it also served as a Aleichem's "The Town of the Little People." The train passed bridge to it: Yiddish folklore absorbed many elements of through Vitebsk, bringing to it the spirits of industrialization,

European and Slavic folklore, merging it with elements of the Russian poetry, and modern culture. Hebrew tradition and library. Their language contained What, then, was the importance of Vitebsk? Vitebsk, the important aspects of German, Hebrew, and Slavic. Thus, easternmost city of Poland, was taken by Russia in 1772, more Yiddish speakers could easily glide into any of the component than twenty years before the partitions of Poland. It was at the languages. From the end of the ninetenth century, Yddish was northeastern corner of the Pale of Settlement, relatively close to the main vehicle for the Modern Jewish Revolution, both Russian capitals. In 1897, it had a considerable Russian manifested in the development of modern literature, population (39.9 percent were Russians and Byelorussians as ideologies, schools, and cultural institutions. opposed to 52.4 percent Jews). It also was home to some Lithuanian Jewry was characterized by an intensive and Russian-speaking Jews, including those expelled from Moscow

thorough approach to learning and knowledge, and it in 1891. It was an important railroad junction, where trains developed yeshivas (high-level academies). Lithuania exported passed from Odessa and Kiev to St. Petersburg, and from Riga rabbis, Hebrew teachers, Yiddish writers, artists, and and the West to Moscow. Thus, the two capitals were easily intellectuals around the world, to Odessa, Warsaw, and accessible. Chagall took advantage of that proximity to escape St. Petersburg, to New York, New Orleans, and Paris. '°° Vilna, to St. Petersburg, even though he lived there illegally; and the Western capital of Lithuanian Jewry, was the center of the when Granovskii's Yiddish Theater visited "the people," they Misnagdim movement, which fought against irrational and went to the closest place inhabited by Jews, Vitebsk. In 1920, ignorant Galician Hasidim. Litvaks are also said to be some of the best Russian artists joined Chagall's People's Art meticulous and naive, even "childish." School in Vitebsk, where they found an eager young Jewish In the eastern part of vast Jewish Lithuania, masses of population awakening to modern culture and speaking simple people lived in tiny shtetls in the deep woods. In this Russian. And when Chagall was pushed out of that school, he region, where Chagall grew up, a special Hasidic movement had just a short ride to Moscow. emerged that introduced joy and optimism into the gloomy

mood of orthodox Judaism; it was built on a revival of the Languages emotional participation of simple people in religious Anatolii Lunacharskii, People's Commissar of Education after

experience. Being a Lithuanian sect, it also stressed learning the Bolshevik Revolution, appointed the painter David and was called Chabad, a Hebrew acronym for "Wisdom, Shterenberg (whom he knew while in exile in Paris) as head of Insight, Knowledge." The founder of this movement, Shneur- IZO, the division of art. As Abram Efros described him: Zalman of Lyady (1745-1813), was born in Lyozno, Chagall's

family town. The movement is also called "Lubavitsher," for a Shterenberg was born in Zhitomir (Ukraine), studied in Paris, and shtetl in that area where the Shneurson dynasty resided before became an artist in Moscow. He does not speak any one of the three the Revolution. In 1909, the city of Vitebsk had two languages, hut can make himself clear in all of them. What he lacks, synagogues and sixty prayer houses, most of them Lubavitsher. he substitutes with interjections and gestures. Listening to his slow

speech, in which the frowning offorehead and lips, or fuzzy sounds fig. 23 and pauses, play the role oj words and concepts — you imagine his Mark, Bella, and Ida Chagall in ipi/. painting as hesitant and careful. Such are the first canvases of

Chagall's Cultural Context foreigners in Paris who try to hold the brush in the French manner'" committed, the Chagalls were in contact with leftist Yiddishist circles. It was with a leftist Yiddish publishing house, the Chagall was anything but hesitant, but this describes his basic Book League of the Jewish People's Fraternal Order, that situation, too; he was, like Shterenberg, a typical member of Chagall published Bella's two autobiographical volumes after his generation and could not speak properly in any of the her death. In New York, even when living with his non-Jewish languages of his various cultures. companion Virginia Haggard, Marc regularly read Yiddish Chagall grew up in a Yiddish-speaking society, in the newspapers (he did not know English) and spoke Yiddish with heartland of the Jewish masses in Russia. We know a great deal Max Lerner, Yosef Opatoshu, and other friends, as well as with about Jewish education in that milieu and can imagine his Jews on the Lower East Side. The largest body of his extant

early learning experiences. The first texts Chagall learned to correspondence throughout his life was with Yiddish writers, read were passages from the Hebrew Bible; the oral teaching often warm, confessional, intimate, and usually both itself and all discussions were conducted in Yiddish. Normally, nationalistic and critical of the Jews, as many Jewish the Biblical text would be read accompanied by a word-for- intellectuals were at the time. The numerous texts inscribed on

word translation — a word in Hebrew, followed by its his paintings are mostly in Yiddish or Hebrew. equivalent in Yiddish; if we were to substitute English for the No doubt, Chagall read Yiddish literature. In his younger Yiddish, the beginning of the Bible would be taught like this: years, Peretz, Mendele Moykher Sforim, and Sholem Aleichem

"bereyshis, in the beginning, bora, created, elokim, God," etc. made a strong impact on his world view. He carefully read all Chagall must have studied the Hebrew Chumash (Pentateuch) three volumes of poetry of his compatriot A. Lyesin (Walt), from the customary age of four until the age of thirteen, with which he illustrated in detail (and even understood enough to

at least four different teachers. Study would have been doubt their "literary," i.e. modern, quality). He also read and conducted every day from dawn to dusk in the teacher's heder, illustrated the poetry of Dovid Hofshteyn, Abraham Sutzkever, an all-male, one-class elementary school at the teacher's home; Elkhonon Vogler, and others. And we have manuscripts of and when a child finished studying with one teacher, he would Yiddish speeches, articles, and poems in Chagall's own hand, go to a higher class at the home of another teacher. The average some of which he published in the prestigious Tel Aviv-based size of a heder in Vitebsk Province was eight children, hence the literary quarterly Di goldene keyt and elsewhere. close contact between the only melamed (teacher) and his pupils. Nevertheless, Chagall's Yiddish spelling was atrocious, and

Teaching focused on reading of the holy texts, not on any he kept apologizing for it in letters to his close friend, the oral or written expression in the language; Hebrew was not Yiddish novelist Opatoshu, and to other Yiddish writers and intended to be used in real-life communication. Chagall editors. Typically, he spelled according to his own, spoken presumably advanced to study with a "Gemore-teacher." But Byelorussian Yiddish dialect, confusing "S" with "Sh" and

there is no evidence of any knowledge by Chagall of Aramaic "EY" with "OY."'""* His own name, Chagall, apparently resulted or the Talmud. Chagall was deeply impressed by the Biblical from this dialect.'"'

stories he heard in childhood, but throughout his life he When Chagall arrived in St. Petersburg to study art, the showed little knowledge of Hebrew. In several paintings, he rich Jews who had permission to live in the capital spoke copied Hebrew texts from the Bible, sometimes with Russian. Though his teacher Lev Bakst (born in Grodno, in mistakes,'"" but never produced any sentence or even western Lithuania) and his first supporter, Maxim Vinaver combination of two Hebrew words of his own. The spelling of (born in Warsaw), were Jews from the Pale, he probably talked the Hebrew words (which even a regular Yiddish reader should to them in Russian. He certainly was influenced by Russian

know) that appear in his numerous Yiddish texts is abysmal. culture at the time. Nevertheless, he wrote Russian like a

At the age of thirteen, Chagall was taken by his mother to a Babel character, employing Yiddish syntax and semantics. Still, Russian secondary school.'"' Russian was the language of Russian was presumably the language of his informal education culture, and a springboard for Jews striving to accommodate and reading, and he even tried to write some poems in Russian. the Russian power structure and to imbibe European culture; Late in life, his Russian was reinforced by his Russian-speaking his parents, though conventionally observant, were apparently Jewish second wife, Valentina Brodskii, who came from unafraid of the new secular trends. The males in Chagall's London to join him in France.

family photos wore no hats. Chagall's mother took him to In France, where Marc spent most of his life and had many Yehuda Pen's school of art, defying what was supposed to be a intellectual friends, he certainly learned to speak French. But, ban on graven images. just as his Russian had a Yiddish subtext, so did his French A fellow schoolboy and budding painter introduced Moyshe have a Russian flavor. Virginia Haggard, the daughter of an (as he was then called) to the circle that included his future English diplomat in Paris, met him in New York after he had

wife, Bella Rosenfeld, a daughter of a prosperous merchant and spent many years in France. As she tells it, "We were soon Hasid. No doubt, Bella's parents spoke Yiddish at home, but conversing in French. His Russian accent was warm and the young people with whom she associated tried to speak colorful, and his grammatical errors made me feel less self- Russian comme il faut, read Russian poetry, performed Russian conscious about my own."'"'^ In a letter to Virginia, Chagall

theater, and discussed topics of Russian culture. wrote, "I would like to write you a whole book, but I write Bella was better educated than Chagall; she even attended French like a Russian pig." Chagall was always immersed in Moscow University. Between them, they presumably spoke painting, not books; his language was the language of mostly Russian, especially after their daughter, Ida, was born. painting. But Yiddish was their true language, and the Russian-educated Bella wrote her memoirs in New York in 1944 in Yiddish, Center and periphery explaining, "A strange thing, I wanted to write. And to write Marc Chagall was born in Vitebsk on July 7, 1887 (7/7/87; he

only in my stammering mother tongue which I have almost made much of his lucky number seven throughout his life).'°^

not spoken since I left my parents' home. The farther my The often-repeated theory, that he was actually born in the childhood years have moved away from me, the closer they smaller town of Lyozno'"** has recently been discredited by the suddenly drew to me, as if they themselves were breathing into art historian Aleksandra Shatskikh.""' Nevertheless, Chagall's my mouth." friend, the critic Abram Efros referred to him as "the painter During their years in New York, though never politically from Lyozno," and the Israeli President and scholar Zalman

54 Benjamin Marshal' Shazar (himself from Byelorussia) called him "our brother from Lyozno and Paris!" As young people, Chagall's parents moved from Lyozno to a house owned by his paternal grandfather in a suburb of the provincial capital Vitebsk. In the big city, they

would be nicknamed "Lyezner " ("from Lyozno"); Efros recognized the impact that Lyozno images made on Chagall. When he came to Paris, Chagall could not mention such a small place as Lyozno: he was from Vitebsk, which he generalized as the symbol ol the Pale of Settlement and provincial Russia, the source ol his fictional world, and the target of his nostalgia. But in many ways he really was a provincial Lyozno boy; his early images of "Vitebsk" were closer to a suburb or a small-town scene"" (photos of the center of Vitebsk at the time show a different city altogether), until he moved to Vitebsk proper after 1914. Yet, he liked to visit fig. 24 Lyozno, where the rest of the family remained, including his Postcard of Vitebsk (Samkov Street). uncles, aunts, and remarried grandparents, and he did some semirealistic paintings there. In a Jewish context, embracing a Lyozno ancestry was prestigious, for the founder of Chabad Hasidism was born in Lyozno. This explains the town's appeal to President Shazar, who was himself named Shneur-Zalman Rubashov, after the legendary rebbe: Chagall was a secular legend in the wake of a religious one! Like other proponents of modern Jewish culture, Chagall himself was fond of presenting a strong religious world as the roots of his secular Jewishness.

But the Chagall legend is first and foremost tied to Vitebsk, and before him the name was of little consequence. As

Tugendkhol'd phrased it, the formula "Zion, Babylon, and Vilna," indicating the three symbolic centers of Jewish culture

in history, became "Zion, Babylon, and Vitebsk" '" — this is how strong his contemporaries felt about Chagall as the symbol of the renaissance of Jewish culture. "When he met his future fiancee in Vitebsk, Moyshe Shagal (or "Moshka," as his parents called him) was a poor suburban boy from the provinces. Bella's family did not quite approve of the match, aspiring painter or not. Chagall developed an ambition to get into high society, prove himself as a great artist, and win his rich and intelligent bride. Paradoxically, he succeeded by reverting in his paintings to the images of his poor, provincial past. Indeed, he strongly felt the demeaning status of his father, who declined from the level of learning set by his father, a Hebrew teacher, to a person steeped in drudgery and smelling of herring. It was Chagall's image of his grandfathers that inspired his paintings with awe. His father's lot reflected the impoverishment of Byelorussian Jewry, but Chagall's frustration was typical of many aspiring young Jewish intellectuals. When Chagall came to St. Petersburg, he boldly thrust himself into the centers of Jewish high society and Russian art, simultaneously presenting the exotic images and values of what

was perceived as the Jewish past, still surviving in the Pale, and of provincial Russia in general. Those images were presented from the outside, from the viewpoint of a modern, secular Jew, and of St. Petersburg's assimilated Jewish society; he depicted the past with a combination of nostalgia and admiration, and often as part of the multicultural scene of

Russian provincial life. Malevich in that period depicted Russian peasants, while Chagall conjured up the small town and its deep, mysterious beliefs and customs. What he offered was not a statement but a world — which appealed to the Jews of the capital, some of whom developed a pride in their past

and in the high values of popular life and folklore at the same time they were integrating into Russian Christian culture. Thus, Chagall reached people at the center by showing them the strange and vital periphery. "' Shortly after, ambitious Chagall moved on to the center of

Chagall's Cultural Context 55 European art. In Paris, too, he showed a fictional world to Bible into his painterly fictional world: it appeared at first in viewers preoccupied with form: an exotic world of his invented the Biblical etchings of the 1930s, still strong in Eastern past. His Vitebsk — which came to include churches — European imagery, then in the colorful Biblical illustrations of became emblematic of Russia as well, for in France Chagall was the 1950s and 1960s, made in southern France and influenced considered a Russian painter. His paintings portrayed a by its light. Here he could combine the principle of different cultural world, an "other," which he made vivid to his composition by color with a public mythology. audience at the center. After the Holocaust, there was a public warmth toward the In the meantime, he also adopted emblematic images of the all-but-annihilated world of the Jews. The Jewish world of the new domain, Paris, represented by the Eiffel Tower and the recent past was dead and its images exhausted, but through the window of his studio. These emblems would now appear side Bible Chagall could again reclaim something he experienced by side with the Jewish and Christian images of Vitebsk. deeply in childhood and which he could, from his peripheral When he returned to Russia, he used images from his new perspective, offer the center. In this cynical century, his view of past, the past of Paris. His authority in Russia was based on his the Bible, embodying the highest values to humanity as a

fame in Paris and Berlin; the budding Yiddish Theater was whole, may be felt as too sweet and simple a message, but if

proud to invite such a famous Jewish artist to design its set. anyone could propose it, it was Chagall. Subsequently, the theater itself became famous, and Chagall Chagall's work on the Bible in the 1930s — especially the drew on its fame. Chagall felt himself to be among the best in powerful early etchings — were exclusively devoted to the first the art world; yet he retained the inferiority complex of a two books of the Pentateuch, which Chagall read in a new Jewish boy from the provinces. Witness how in 1952, after Yiddish translation."^ These etchings focused not so much on major solo exhibitions in New York, Paris, and London, he the text itself but on basic archetypical scenes, such as "The wrote with amazement and pride to Opatoshu that he was Sacrifice of Isaac," "The Golden Calf," and "Circumcision," going to marry a woman of the rich Brodskii family from embellished by AMdrash and transmitted in Jewish folklore and Kiev!'" in stories for children. When Chagall resumed his work on the Bible in the 19SOS, all twenty-four books of the Bible were

On Chagall's evolution available in Yehoash's Yiddish translation and he drew on all With time, Chagall's strength became a weakness. Through parts of the Bible"'; he also went beyond the stock images of over-repetition, the images from his original fictional world, the Bible from his childhood, and related his works to specific based on his retrospectively constructed childhood, lost much textual passages. of their impact. The vitality of Chagall's Vitebsk derived in large part from the surreal, circuslike perspective through

which he saw it. His strength as an artist came from the novelty of his fictional world and originality of his

deformations, the mysterious oxymorons that permeated it, and the tensions and counterpoints between the various strata of his paintings. When the tensions were lost, the existential comedy became a sentimental decoration. With age, especially after the Holocaust, his view of the Jewish world became more sentimental, nostalgic, and stereotypical, but less deformed, imaginative, and whimsical. The physical Vitebsk was

destroyed and he couldn't imagine it anymore. Similarly, after Bella's death, love too became in his paintings an abstract nostalgia. One solution to this impasse was a shift to color, which flooded large parts of his paintings, and eventually served as the background for figures that were painted or sketched on

top of it. In his classic period, deformation of color reinforced the deformation of his presented world, and vice versa. When Chagall's presented world became weakened, sentimental, and ornamental, his colors too — though beautiful in their own rich texture and light — lost the power they had aquired in their interaction and mutual reinforcement with the other strata. Another solution was to widen the range of his media to include sculpture, porcelain, and stained-glass windows. The windows, murals, and ceilings especially had a powerful effect on large audiences — with them he repeated, to some extent, the feat of his public art in the Yiddish Theater murals. Yet

most of those works were summations of his oeuvre at its current stage, translated into another medium; they were not, as the murals had been, a breakthrough in their own right. A more substantive solution, encouraged by Ambroise Vollard, was the acquisition of new fictional domains from major works of literature — Gogol', LaFontaine, A Thousand and One Nights — as well as from the circus. The most important and comprehensive of those new worlds was the Bible. Like the circus, the Bible had been part of Chagall's childhood imagination. In France, Chagall incorporated the

56 Benjamin Hanhav Notes to the Introduction 16. From a speech at Mount Holyoke College, 1943, quoted in

1. See "Our Goals and Objectives," translated in this book, Susan Compton, Chagall, exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of pp. 145-46. Arts, 1985), p. 153.

2. Translated in this book, pp. 173-74. 17. "Chagall 'over the Roofs of the World,'" in Compton, Chagall.

Notes to Chapter 1 18. T S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," in 3. The timing of the end of Modernism has to do with the The Sacred Wood {\.ondon: Methuen, i960), p. 58. nature of the social history of ideas more than with some

inherent evolution of art. It could have appeared in the "zero" 19. In Herschel B. Chipp, Peter Selz, and Joshua C. Taylor, stage of art, represented by Dada and Suprematism, or in the Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics post-World War II decade. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), p. 295. 4. As a deliberate postmodernist, Chagall often liked to emphasize pre-Modernist European painting. Although his 20. Translated in Benjamin and Barbara Harshav, eds. and

Homage to Apolltnaire (1911-12) was dedicated to the most avant- trans., American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology (Berkeley garde leaders of the day (Apollinaire, Canudo, Cendrars, and and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), p. 779. Walden), on the Yiddish manuscript of his autobiography 21. Ibid., p. 776. written in 1925 (in the YIVO archive), he wrote an inscription in Russian — "For Rembrandt, Cezanne, my Mama, my wife" 22. Ibid., p. 774. — promoting the great masters of art over the fashions of his 23. See my book The Meaning of Yiddish (Berkeley and Los age, and also indicating the importance of his family in the Angeles: University of California Press, 1990). formation of his own fictional world. 24. This will be discussed in my book Language in Time of 5. Werner Haftmann, Marc Chagall (New York: Harry N. Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Abrams, 1973), p. 7. Press, forthcoming, 1993).

6. Grigori Kasovsky, "Chagall and the Jewish Art 25. Speech at the Chagall-Fefer Evening, IKOR, New York, Programme," in Christoph Vitali, ed., Man Chagall: June 30, 1944; the manuscript of this speech is in the Pesakh The Russian Yean 1906-1922, exh. cat. (Frankfurt: Schirn Novick Archive, YIVO (New York). Kunsthalle, 1992). 26. Peter Gay, "Sigmund Freud: A German and his 7. Chagall's letter to Pen written in Moscow on Sept. 14, 1921, Discontents," in Freud. Jews and Other Germans: Masters and was published in Alexandra Shatskich [Aleksandra Shatskikh}, Victims in Modernist Culture (New York: Oxford University "Marc Chagall and Kazimir Malevich," Shagalovskie dni v Press, 1978). Vitebske (special issue of Vit'btchi, July 3-5, 1992). 27. Alfred Wolfenstein, "Das neue Dichtertum der Juden," in 8. Around 1900, 21,000 Jews lived in St. Petersburg. They were Gustav Krojanker, ed., Juden in der deutschen Literatur (Berlin: mostly rich and influential, or professionals with university Welt-Verlag, 1922). degrees. 28. James Johnson Sweeney quotes a statement by Chagall: 9. Maxim Vinaver, born in Warsaw in 1862, lived in St. "I fill up the empty space in my canvas as the structure of my Petersburg and died in France in 1926. Vinaver was a founder picture requires with a body or an object according to my of the Kadet (Constitutional Democratic) Party, the largest humor" (J. J. Sweeney, Marc Chagall, exh. cat. {New York: faction in the Duma in 1906, and was its vice chairman. He Museum of Modern Art, 1946}, p. 15). We quoted above a was active in the Society for the Promotion of Culture among similar and more elaborated statement from his speech at Jews and headed the Historic-Ethnographic Commission, Mount Holyoke College. Of course, Chagall describes here his which studied the history of the Jews in Russia. intuitive process of working on the canvas rather than the

10. See his essay "The Artist Marc Chagall," translated in this contents or principles of juxtaposition his critical faculty has in

book, pp. 141-43. mind. We must also not forget that he is talking here in a period and to an audience interested in formal matters. In 11. A term used to describe a trend in Russian art that spanned earlier statements he would stress his nostalgia for "Vitebsk." 1910-14 that was adopted by Chagall, Natal'ia Goncharova, As we explained, both are true at the same time. Mikhail Larionov, Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, and others. Most of the Neoprimitivists moved on to more radical, avant-garde 29. The French mathematician Rene Thorn developed such a art forms. theory to be applied to economics or semiotics of language

and culture. It offers a series of models representing 12. Translated in this book, pp. 134-43. unpredictable breaks, "catastrophes" in an otherwise regular

13. At least, this is how Chagall perceived the events. process and graph. Aleksandra Shatskikh has argued that Chagall wanted to leave 30. See Chipp et. al., Theories of Modern Art, p. 154. the school even before Malevich arrived, and that the students made a public appeal to keep him there. See Shatskikh, "Marc Notes to Chapter 2 Chagall and Kazimir Malevich." 31. See pp. 134-43- 14. On the theory of fictional worlds, see Thomas G. Pavel, 32. Aleksandra Shatskikh, in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Years 1906-1922. 1986). Also, see my "Fictionality and Fields of Reference:

Remarks on a Theoretical Framework," Poetics Today, vol. 5 33. A. Vetrov, "On Chagall," Ekran, no. 7 (1921). (1984), no. 2. 34. Translated in this book, pp. 153-57.

15. "Portrait," Oct. 1913, in Walter Albert, ed.. Selected Writings 35. See p. 156. of Blaise Cendrars (New York: New Directions, 1966).

Notes 57 }6. See p. 156. 50. The Yiddish reflexive ikh haleve zikh ("I entertain myself," from the Russian halovat'sia) is written here in one word, as in 37. See pp. 153-57- Russian, yet another example of Chagall's use of Russian

38. Kazimir Malevich, "The Non-Objective World," in spelling habits in Yiddish. The repeated ikh (I) at the Chipp et. al., Theories of Modern Art, pp. 341-42. beginning and end of the phrase is a form of folk grammar, used emphatically, as in Menakhem-Mendel's speech in Agents. 39. Admittedly, there is a difficulty with this explanation. At Amishai-Maisels's translation of this expression as: "I love you" that time, Chagall's and the official Soviet spelling of the has no base in either Yiddish or Russian. word "Yiddish" did not begin with "I" ("yud") but with "A"

(the "mute aleph"): Aidish. Chagall used the spelling, twice, 51. Teatr is spelled in the Russian manner, accepted by on the male dancer's shoes in Love on the Stage. That would Soviet 'Yiddish orthography, as in the canvas Love on the Stage. imply the acronym AKT for the theater. Yet, the double Note also the feminine (or unfinished) form oi yidishe rather repetition, the easy distortion of IKS to make IKT, and perhaps than yidisher. the memory of the older "Germanizing" spelling, yW/.f/j, may 52. See pp. 145-46. explain the trick.

53. Amishai-Maisels claims that this name refers to Sholem 40. A painting by the New York Jewish artist Rafael Soyer, Aleichem's hero, thus disrupting the family list and leaving the showing unemployed immigrants before a coffee shop with grandmother with no husband. We have no definite source tor items and prices in English, is titled Reading from Left to Right. the name, but Menakhem-Mendel was common in that area, The alien direction of writing in the new country symbolizes after the Hasidic rebbe "Menakhem-Mendel from Vitebsk." the broader alienation lelt by Jewish immigrants.

54. Chagall's paternal grandmother married his maternal 41. On Chagall's set design tor the Agents, which takes place on grandfather when their first spouses died. Those were the a train car, we read in Yiddish: FAR REIKHER[ERS] LK III, Lyozno grandparents he knew. the first two words mean "for smokers" (in Yiddish in the

Russian train!); the last part is an inversion of the Russian 55. On the leftmost clown's green sock, the Russian inscription

label "III CL[ASS}," written in the right direction but in the P verane is penciled in. According to Aleksei Kovalev, wrong language. Director of the Restoration Department, State Tret'iakov

Gallery, it signifies a green color named after the Italian 42. Avram Kampf suggests that a "perspective of sentiment" painter Paolo Veronese. governs the picture: "that which looms large in one's memor}-

appears huge on the canvas" ("Chagall in the 'Yiddish Theater," 56. Amishai-Maisels, in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years

in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years 1906-1922, p. 98). 1906-1922, p. 112. Perhaps such a principle helps the writer rationalize Chagall's 57. Rudolf Arnheim, The Genesis of a Painting: Picasso's programmatic antirealism, but it does not really work. Can we Guernica (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California say that any of the actors loomed larger in Chagall's memory Press, 1962), p. 26. than his own parents, wife, and child, who are quite small in

the canvas? In the case of the Introduction, it is thematic 58. Ibid., p. 26. foregrounding that governs the scale. The topic of his painting, 59. See p. 150. the theater, is represented by large figures, while Chagall's own

world and conceptual perspectives are inserted in the margins 60. See p. 148. and interstices of space. Small size makes things no less 61. See his later speeches and essays in "Yiddish, especially those important or less close to the artist's sentiment; on the translated in this book. contrary, it betrays his love tor minute details and his personal world. We also see this in the small insertions of the world of 62. Aleksandra Shatskikh, "Marc Chagall and the Jewish

" his fictionalized "Vitebsk under and on the margins of the Chamber Theater, " unpublished manuscript. panels representing the tour Arts. 63. For a list of productions, see A. N. Manteytel, "The First

43. Conversation with Aleksei Kovalev, Director of the Theater of the Revolution," Moskva, no. i (1968). Restoration Department, State Tret'iakov Gallery, 64. Shatskikh theorizes that Terevsat's move to Moscow, and July 30, 1992. not an explicit expulsion by Malevich, was the cause of

44. See p. 155. Chagall's move there.

45. See p. 151. Similarly, Vladimir Maiakovskii, in his radical 65. Chagall's involvement with revolutionary activities and his essay "Two Chekhovs," re-read the sentimentalized Chekhov as practical work for the theater before the Yiddish Theater a great and funny master ot language. commission were unknown until recent publications by

Menteyfel and Shatskikh. Chagall's design is a rare example of 46. A practical joke performed by two boys, called "let us kill a his participation in propaganda art. goy," consisted ot urinating together and making a cross of the

two streams (symbolizing the cross on a tombstone). In the dG. State Bakhrushin Museum, Moscow, Fond. 584, village milieu, a pig marked the most obvious difference files 20, 21, 87. between Jews and Gentiles. 67. The early announcements list Chagall as the designer of all 47. See p. 173. three plays, while later ones mention Al'tman.

48. B. Zingerman, 'Russia, Chagall, Mikhoels, and Others," 68. The papers of the commission were kept in CGALI (Central

Teatr, vol. 2 (1990), p. 37. State Archive for Literature and Art), Moscow, Fond. 2307,

Opis' I, Unit 81: "Acts of Documentary Control of the 49. According to Aleksandra Shatskikh (Vitali, Marc Chagall: Financial-Economic Activity of the Liquidation Commission of The Russian Years 1906-1922, p. 81), the figure was modeled on the Moscow State "Viddish Theater" (1950, GG pp.); and Units the actor H. S. Krashinski, but there is no proof for this. 82-83: "Acts and Powers of Attorney for the Transfer and

58 Benjamin Harshav Acceptance of Property of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater" 88. Kultur-Lige's programmatic brochure exemplifies the

(1950; vol. I, 206 pp., vol. 2, 179 pp.). In 1976, however, these conflict. It attacks the parallel Hebrew school organization

files were extracted from the archive and sent to vydehny v Tarbut as being "Zionist-Rabbinical" and promoting Eretz-

makidati/ru (scrap paper). Unit 3 is also missing. According to Israel, "A land where Jews don't live they call our land, a some sources, they must be preserved somewhere, perhaps by language Jews don't speak they call our language." the KGB (the fate of similar files sent as "scrap paper"). 89. In The New York Times, Dec. 14, 1926, critic J. Brooks 69. Chaim Beyder, "Marc Chagall Returned to Russia," Atkinson wrote, "The effect is astonishing, as unreal as the unpublished manuscript. mystic legend of the play."

70. Alexei P. Kovaliev [Aleksei P. Kovalev], "Report on the 90. Das Moskauer jiidische akademische Theater. Restoration of the Murals for the Jewish Kamerny Theatre in 91. Faina Burko, The Soviet Yiddish Theatre in the Twenties Moscow," in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years 1906-1922, (Ph.D. diss.. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 1978), p. 134. p. 81.

Notes to Chapter 3 92. Yosef Schein, Arum moskver yidishn teater (Around the

71. Leningradskaia krasnaia gazeta, Aug. 30, 1926. Moscow Yiddish Theater) (Paris: Lcs editions polyglottes, 1964). 72. "Das jiidische Theater in Moskau," in Das Moskauer jiidische

akademische Theater (The Moscow Yiddish Academic Theater) 93. See p. 151. (Berlin: Die Schmiede, 1928), pp. 17-21. Notes to Chapter 4 73. In Mit Schlender mid Harfe: Theaterkritiken aus drei 94. Chagall began My Life just before he left Russia in 1922, Jahrzehnten (Berlin: Hensche Iverlag, 1981). probably for publication there, and finished it in Berlin in

74. Kultiir-Lige: A sakh hakl (The Culture League: 1923. Written in Russian (not his native tongue), it reinforces A stocktaking) (Kiev, Nov. 1919), pp. 1-3. the public image the famous painter had by then acquired. Its

writing is colorful (e.g., "Lenin turned it [Russia} upside down 75. That may be an exaggeration for a Jew born in Riga; the way I turn my pictures"), and provides occasional Granovskii didn't talk much anyway. explanations of the oddities in his paintings, but the text is 76. Mikhoels, "In our Studio," in Dos yidishe kamer teatr problematic. As Andre Salmon indicated in the French edition,

(The Yiddish Chamber Theater) (Petrograd: Jewish Theater it was written in an impossible and untranslatable Russian.

Society, 1919), p. 22. (The Berlin publisher Cassirer addressed this problem by publishing the drawings oi My Life without the text.) Clearly, 77. Ibid. it conveyed Chagall's associative, disheveled Yiddish in Russian 78. Ibid. words. Bella Chagall, a newcomer to France, translated the text

into French with the aid of her French teacher; it was then 79. Ibid., p. 17. patched up again and published only in 1932, by which time

80. Ibid., p. 24. many specific details were lost or distorted (other details were added or changed). The English and German editions were 81. P. A. Markov, The Soviet Theatre (New York: G. P. Putnam's translated from that French version and contain many puzzling Sons, 193s), pp. 165-66. things. For example, one finds in the English version: 82. The degree to which the Jewish tradition was merged with "However, to live in Petersburg, one needs not only money, but

the so-called "internationalism" and political engagement can also a special authorization. I am a Jew. And the czar had set be seen, for example, in the program of the spectacle called aside a certain residential zone in which the Jews were obliged "Carnival of Jewish Comedians." According to a program of to stay." Surely, Chagall meant the Pale of Settlement,

May 12, 1923, it included: hundreds of kilometers from the capital. Elsewhere, the changes may reflect Bella's censorship or "adaptation" for a Thieves' songs from Odessa and Warsaw; a Negro performance ''Java non-Jewish audience. For example, Chagall's plea to his Celebes"; the Jewish King Lear in Pensa; Klezmer songs; three loves — presumed ancestor, the synagogue painter Hayim Segal, to Negro, American, Hasidic; street songs from Vilna; Hasidic songs and come out of the grave and "blow into me, my bearded dances; "Matchmaking" — an unusual operetta; American songs in grandfather, a few drops o{Jewish truth!" (i.e., teach me the Jewish style; six Jewish acrobats; the Marseillaise. Jewish tradition of folk art) in the English edition became, What the Jewish comedians knew of "Negro love" and "Java "distill in me one or two drops oi eternal truth."

Celebes" is hard to imagine; and the Marseillaise is a rather The Russian original, however, was translated into Yiddish comic end to a Jewish folk carnival. in 1924 by two major Yiddish Expressionist writers who knew both Russian and Yiddish well, Peretz Markish and Oyzer 83. S. Mikhoels, "Mikhoels Vofsi On the Theater," interview, Varshavsky; both were friends of Chagall, who illustrated the Literarishe hleter, April 27, 1928. two journals they edited in Paris, where they all resided at the

84. Ibid. time. Chagall edited the translation and published it himself in his own name in several Yiddish journals around the globe, 85. Andre van Gyseghem, Theatre in Soviet Russia (London: notably in the prestigious literary journals Literarishe bleter Faber and Faber, 1943), p. 174. (Warsaw) and Di Tsukunft (New York); Chagall's memoirs 86. In the "war of the languages," Ben-Gurion came down on appeared in several installments in Tsukunft in 1925, seven years the side of the Hebrew HaBima rather than this Yiddish before the French edition. Chagall intended to publish the "leftist" acting. Yiddish autobiography in book form before any other language

(as he wrote to the New York literary critic Sh. Nigger), but it 87. Max Osborn, "Marc Chagall," Zhar-ptitsa, no. 11 (1923), never materialized. The manuscript, including corrections, is p. 13. preserved in the YIVO archives (New York). See the discussion of this issue by the YIVO Librarian, Dina Abramovitsh, in

Noses 59 I "Marc Chagall's Memoirs of his Youth in Tsukunft and his iio. In a letter to Opatoshu, he wrote that he felt at home in Letters to A. Lyesin," Tsukunft, vol. 95 (1988), nos. 5-8. Vitebsk only in "my own few streets," and in another, "Do I know Russia? I know just a few streets in Vitebsk, and some of 95. Unfortunately, Chagall criticism and biographies are Petersburg and Moscow." written mostly by authors, Jews and non-Jews, who no longer know the languages and situations of that lost world; mistakes 111. See p. 143. in reading the Yiddish and Hebrew texts and subtexts abound. 112. Chagall reached some of the highest levels of St. 96. See Chagall's "Leaves from My Notebook," translated in Petersburg Jewish intelligentsia. And a strange sight he must this book, pp. 173-74. have been! His friend of those years, Aleksandr Romm, an aspiring artist and son of a St. Petersburg surgeon (who later 97. We have detailed statistics from the census of 1897. The quarreled with Chagall in Vitebsk and is, admittedly, a hostile figures here are based on the relevant entries in the Russian though admiring witness) described "Moysey" as seen with the Evreiskaia entsiklopediia (Jewish encyclopedia) (St. Petersburg: eyes of his social class: "A provincial with bad manners, a not Brockhaus and Ephron, 1915), and Ch. Shmeruk's dissertation quite correct Russian language, and rumpled clothes." In (1961). Aleksandr Romm, "Marc Chagall," unpublished manuscript. 98. Shml was derived from the Polish mjasteczko, small city 113. He made the same boast in a letter to the Yiddish writer (from rnjasto, city), then adopted in Russian as mestechko. In and activist Daniel Charney. many English books, including autobiographies and

translations, "shtetl" is misleadingly translated as "village." In 114. In 1928, his friend Opatoshu sent him the first two books some English titles given to Chagall's paintings, we find the of the Pentateuch in the spectacular, poetic translation by the same confusion. American Yiddish poet Yehoash — and Yiddish was a language Chagall truly understood. Chagall thanked him profusely and 99. In a lecture in New York in 1943, praising what the explained how he needed it for his work for Ambroise Vollard. Russian Revolution did for the Jews, Chagall told how, as a

child, he would hide under the bed when he saw & gorodovoy 115. In the catalogue of the Musee national message biblique through the window. Marc Chagall, Nice, we find: a) gouaches and drawings of

1930-32: 23 from Genesis, 14 Exodus, i (nonspecific) from each, 100. On the philosopher Levinas and other Litvak Jewish Numbers and Joshua; b) engravings of 1931—34: 35 Genesis, 14 intellectuals in France, see Judith Friedlander, Vilna on the Seine Exodus; while the engravings of 1952—56 include works from (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, loi. Abram Efros, ProfHi (Profiles) (Moscow: Federatsiia, 1930). Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezechiel. The lithographs of 1952-68 are again mostly from his beloved Pentateuch, as well 102. An example is eretz (land) with a Yiddish ayin instead of as the "simple" and popular books of Ruth and Esther. the Hebrew alef, on the gate of his The Cemetery Gates (1917).

103. We don't know how long he attended the Russian school; he was not a great student and had to repeat at least one grade.

104. Chagall was uncertain about his dialectal spelling and changed every ey into oy; for example: he writes hoym (home)

instead oiheym, and even Roynhart for [Max} Reinhardt. This is how his son-in-law Franz Meyer and all who followed him invented a new Jewish name for his beloved uncle, spelled in

German: Neuch (which in Lithuanian Yiddish is pronounced Neyakh) instead of Noah.

105. See Appendix A, "Why Marc Chagall?" p. 61.

106. Virginia Haggard, My Life with Marc Chagall (New York:

Donald I. Fine, 1986), p. 14.

107. Late in life, he hinted that his father may have registered his birth two or three years earlier than the actual date, to

protect him from being conscripted into the army or, according to Bella, to protect his younger brother David (the exemption was based on a considerable distance in age between the two). That would take two or three years off his old age! However, his son-in-law Franz Meyer demonstrated that this was implausible, for Chagall's younger sister was born in 1889 and they were not twins. See Meyer, Marc Chagall: Life and Work

(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1963), p. 11.

108. Also called in Russian Lioznii, in Yiddish Lyezne, and in Polish Lozniany.

109. Shatskikh found that Vitebsk did indeed burn down on

August 7, 1887 ijljl^j), confirming Chagall's story that, when his mother gave birth, both mother and baby had to be dragged to the other side of town — a story that became the source of his frightening flaming-red colors. See her "When and Where was Marc Chagall Born?" in Vitali, Marc Chagall: The Russian Years ipo6-ip22.

60 Benjamin Harshav Appendix A

Why Marc Chagall? The artist claimed that his family's name was Segal and that his father changed it to Shagal. How did it happen? Why should a simple herring trader change his name? And was it easy to change a name in tsarist Russia?

The name Segal (accented on the first syllable, Segal) is spelled SGL in Hebrew, that is, with no written vowels

(because it is an acronym for the Hebrew designation Sgan Levia ["Attendant to Levites"]). But Lithuanian Yiddish speakers confused "S" and "Sh," never knowing which to use where. In western Lithuania, every "Sh" was pronounced "S," while in eastern Byelorussia, the contrary was true: people said tshvantshik instead oi tsvantsik (twenty), zhihn instead o( zibn (seven); Chagall himself, in his published Yiddish autobiography, called his hometown Lyezhne instead of Lyezne (Lyozno). As Marvin Herzog, the specialist on Yiddish dialectology, tells me, this tendency was especially strong in eastern Byelorussia. (See the recordings of pronounciation in Mohilev, Lyozno, Vitebsk, and the former Vitebsk Gubernaia, in Mordekhai Venger, "Vegn Yidishe dialektn," in Tsaytshrift, vol. I [1926}, and vols. 2-3 [1928}. Chagall himself rhymed "S" and "Sh" in his Yiddish poems.) Thus the name SGL was pronounced ShGL. Shifting the accent to the last syllable, it became Shagal. This stress on the last syllable and the resulting vowel pattern is used in other family names made of Hebrew acronyms: ShaBaD, ChaBaD, ShaDaL, YaLaG (spelled ShBD, ChBD, etc.); the person who registered the name in Russian must have been proud of the fact that it was an honorable, Hebrew name. It was probably Marc's paternal grandfather, a Hebrew teacher, who did so. It could not have been Marc's father, for Uncle Zusia in Lyozno was also a Shagal, as the artist indicated in the painting Uncle's

Shop in Lyozno (1914-15), in which his uncle's barbershop is depicted with a sign, in Russian, bearing that name. Later, when Chagall moved from writing in Cyrillic to Latin letters, he Frenchified the spelling to Chagall. (One wonders if his fame would have been the same had he been called Segal, rather than the interesting, ultimately stressed, and French-sounding Chagall?) Yet he still claimed that Hayim Segal, the eighteenth-century painter of the Mohilev

Synagogue, was his great-grandfather (this is possible, for Lyozno was in Mohilev Province). Indeed, in the two versions oiThe Pinch of Snuff {i<)iz), he included, inside the book read by the pious Jew, in Hebrew, SGL MShH (read as Segal Moyshe, in roll-call order). The same name, MShH SGL, is inserted in the Biblical quotations in The RedJew (also known as Jew in Bright Red; 1915) and The Green Jew (1914).

"Marc" seems easy, but it is not clear when exactly he acquired it. His Jewish name was "Moyshe"; his parents

Russified it in daily use, as they did with the names of most of their children, and called him "Moshka." In his Yiddish autobiography, he refers to himself in Vitebsk as "Moshke from Pokrove Street," yet his "aristocratic" friend (as Chagall dubbed him) called him "Marc." His friends in St. Petersburg used his full name in Russian — without the childish diminutive Moysey — but in France he became Marc. The name came perhaps in imitation of the Jewish sculptor Marc Antokolski from Vilna, who lived in St. Petersburg and was famous in Russia in the previous generation. In his Paris years,

Chagall often did not sign his work at all, or signed without his first name; his Russian paintings are signed in Russian or, later, in French. Yet, he sometimes returned to signing MShH SGL (as in the The RedJew and The Pinch of Snuff).

Appendixes I 61 Appendix B green and set in the air in memory of the criticism launched against the works with which Chagall had decorated Vitebsk:

Misinterpretations of the murals 'Why is the cow green and why is the horse flying in the sky?' Many critics and scholars have commented on Chagall's murals Thus Malevich is taken to task for mocking the irrationality of for the Yiddish Theater. The problems the works pose are not Chagall's art" (p. no). Is the cow then Malevich's or Chagall's?

easy to resolve, for, on the one hand, they seem to contain Is the green Malevich's or Chagall's? And who was mocking allusions to cultural stereotypes and to Chagall's biography, here?

fictional world, and paintings, while, on the other, it is easy to On the page in My Life to which we are directed, Chagall is

fall into the trap of allegorizing, reading the paintings simply unequivocal about it: "All the house-painters ... as well as

as an encoded personal message. No doubt, much of the their apprentices, began to copy my cows and my horses. . . .

contemporary evidence is lost, and the identities of various My multicolored animals swung back and forth, swollen with actors presumably represented in the Introduction cannot be revolution. The workers marched forward singing the

established. It is not even clear that, in fact, Chagall International. . . . Their Communist leaders appeared to be less

represented particular persons in all cases; the figures are quite satisfied^:] Why is the cow green and why is the horse flying in schematized, and critics differ over even the identification of the sky?" (Chagall, My Life (New York: Orion Press, i960},

Mikhoels (presumably painted two or three times in the P- 139)- Introduction). Did the Communist leaders represent Malevich? And if so, The most inventive interpretation so far has been written did they mock Malevich's cow, or, rather, Chagall's unrealistic

by Ziva Amishai-Maisels ("Chagall's Murals for the State color? All this overinterpretation is accompanied by a Jewish Chamber Theatre," in Christoph Vitali, ed.. Marc declaration that "these fantastic images become understandable Chagall: The Russian Years 1906—1922 [Frankfurt: Schirn through an analysis of the idioms Chagall used and a Kunsthalle, 1991}, pp. 107-27). The wide availability of that knowledge of his experiences and the art of those involved in essay, however, requires a critical response. To this reader, them" (p. no). Is the whole theater mural really a manifesto Amishai-Maisels's daring interpretations are farfetched and against Malevich's Suprematism — "a 'griner,' an

based on absurd logical leaps, faulty Yiddish, and an inexperienced style"? The figure welcoming the cow is assumption that Chagall was a painter with a precisely encoded described as "a Jewish folk musician/artist with a stringless

message who could inscribe all his personal grudges in the broken violin," yet in the next sentence he becomes a peasant; a

paintings without any of his peers in the theater noticing it. few lines later, the peasant is transformed into El Lissitzky!

The basic assumption — that Chagall "used the facade of This is supported by an invented Yiddish: the fiddler does a poetic images which he refused to explain to hide secret split, and our author fantasizes that an acrobatic "split" in

messages" — is questionable. The claim that "this approach Yiddish is shpaltung, therefore indicating the "rift in the

derived from his Jewish upbringing which had taught him to Vitebsk school." But there is no such word in Yiddish; in

interpret the Bible on four levels" — i.e., that in the heder he Chagall's time, there probably was no word in Yiddish for such

could have studied the difficult kabbalistic theory of four levels coarse acrobatics, though later it was called a shpagat.

of meaning — is highly doubtful, as is the possibility of That Malevich and Lissitzky should become heroes of

identifying four levels of meaning in each Chagallian image. Chagall's Introduction is at least strange; most arguments

That author also claims that Chagall "believed that anyone supporting it are as absurd as the above. Amishai-Maisels

interested in his work would study it closely, and that as long associates the fiddler on the right with Lissitzky, but the as the in-group he worked with — in this case, the director identification of this fiddler as Mikhoels (by Franz Meyer and and the actors — were aware of the meanings he has added, Aleksandra Shatskikh) is more logical and in accord with

that was enough" (p. no). Yet soon after, she claims that Chagall's stories about his influence on Mikhoels. This can be Chagall attacked Granovskii in this very painting: "Chagall supported by a more important Yiddish expression: shpiln indicates his scorn for Granovsky's scant knowledge of Jewish means both to play music and to act in a play, hence playing

traditions" (p. 113). Did Granovskii understand and condone the fiddle is an obvious metaphor for acting. Thus, the green the attack? Why do we find no trace of these interpretations in cow, representing Chagall's unrealistic art (just executed in the memoirs of Efros, who lectured about the paintings in the Vitebsk), charges into the situation, and Mikhoels, not

theater itselP knowing how to play {i.e., perform a play}, comes to Chagall Let us analyze several specific claims of this interpretation. for advice. In her reading of the Introduction, through some leaps of logic, In her interpretation of the murals, the same author the author identifies the green Chagallian animal at the left as misreads the Yiddish inscription IKTIKT as Mkit; from this,

"Malevich's cow," because in 1913 Kazimir Malevich made a she extrapolates that it "suggest[s} the name 'Mikita,' a painting with a cow and a violin (along with some other Ukrainian version of 'Nikita,' which was used by Jews in

things, we may add). But Malevich's cow was a postcard brown Vitebsk to represent the typical non-Jew" (p. 113). Where is the

cow (as on Swiss chocolate bars), while this animal is green, evidence? Why would the northernmost city in Byelorussia use

which is interpreted thus: "Moreover, the color indicates that a Ukrainian name? (Chagall's Slavic language was Russian, in

Malevich's new style is a 'griner,' an inexperienced style which which the name is pronounced Nikita.) And why would this

has not stood the test of time" (p. iii). name, rather than Ivan, represent the "non-Jew"? And yet,

Green, however, was one of Chagall's favorite colors: the based on this invented word, a figure "Mikita" is found in the face oiThe Green Jew (1914) has certainly withstood "the test of painting and becomes the focus of a whole Christian-Jewish time"; the green-clad Jew in The Spoonful of Milk (1912), the antagonism, including a criticism of Granovskii himselfl

green face of Chagall himself in / and the Village (1911), and the Amishai-Maisels writes, "Granovsky has no arms. He is green face of the fiddler in the panel Music from the Yiddish another 'kalike,' even worse off than Lissitzky. But being

Theater suite are other examples; and in his first theater without hands entirely not only means that he is unsuccessful,

production, for the Comedians' Resting Place in St. but that he is a 'goylem,' a dummy. His lack of hands makes Petersburg, Chagall painted the faces of all the actors green. him unable to accept the gift of Chagall's talent, proffered to But Amishai-Maisels offers another explanation for the green him as a palette, and the way he turns away and kicks back at

cow as well: "In the mural, Malevich's cow is ironically painted Chagall reflects his disdain" (p. 113). True, a kalike (cripple.

62 Bcnjcimni Harshap usually crippled in one or both legs) is also a metaphor for a line. (Chagall told this story only after HaBima and The person who is bad at his job; but why should Granovskii be Dybb//k became famous.) Yet, with such clearly stated attitudes singled out, when Efros, Mikhoels, and others also lack arms or in the management of the Yiddish Theater, it is unlikely that limbs, typical of the Chagallian manner? In Chapter 2, we Chagall would include The Dybbnk in his murals — and there noted that the inscription LAGASh (the inverted ShAGAL) on is no proof for it. the Introdiictiiin is without a fourth letter (an ideogram of a

painter is substituted), and what is left reads LA.G . . . Sh — yet Amishai-Maisels interpolates an "I," and invents a Yiddish word lagish (it should be logish), "suggesting that the

'irrational' Chagall is actually logical" (p. 113). On such himrshe jislekh (Yiddish lor "chicken legs") stands the whole edifice of the author's interpretation of the

Introduction. Most of its Yiddish translations are simply wrong.

It is not true that "the Yiddish term lor a sick cow " is ilyhhitk, or that "one of the names for [a domestic animal} is a 'nshome,' a soul. " Hence neither is it true that any domestic animal on Chagall's paintings represents a ghost, a dybbnk, or that " "in Yiddish one speaks of 'a green and yellow melancholy' and so on.

The most amazing conjecture is that Chagall painted the play The Dybhiik into his Yiddish Theater murals. Any leap of logic seems legitimate to prove this argument. Thus, the boy hovering above the Suprematist clouds in the panel AIz/j/V is described as a "flying figure " and linked to another panel: "Set in the same area as the 'nshome' in the previous panel, she [sic!] suggests the bride who ascends to meet her beloved, leaving the black clouds behind. " (Note the pronoun "she" referring to the boy — in Hebrew, a "flying figure" is feminine.) Indeed, in the upper-left corner of another panel.

Dance — not at all in the same area as the boy — a corner of an animal is seen, but an animal is not a nshome (soul), and a soul is not yet a dybbiik\ and if being pale makes it a dybbuk, why isn't the Jew blowing a shofar in the upper-right corner a dybbiik too? And how are the two different figures in different panels related? And how are all the visiting dybbiiks related to the context of the paintings in which they appear? An-ski's play Between Two Worlds was published in 1919 in Vilna, which was then separated from Moscow by a war zone. Even if the book had arrived in Moscow and Chagall had read it, it became important — and was renamed The Dybbnk — only when the Moscow Hebrew Theater, HaBima, rehearsed it in 1921, after the murals were finished. Contrary to Amishai-

Maisels's claim, in Chagall's frieze The Wedding Table there is no trace of The Dybbi/k's ominous mood — it is simply the happy double wedding from Mazel Tov, one play in the Sholem Aleichem Evening. The main problem with conflating Chagall's murals with

The Dybbi/k is that at the time there was a war to the death between Hebrew and Yiddish in Soviet Russia; the leaders of Yiddish culture tried to close the Hebrew theater; and the war ended in a ban on the Hebrew language and the liquidation of all Hebrew writers and activists. Chagall himself wrote, "I was invited to do the stage for The Dybbnk in HaBima. I didn't know what to do. Those two theaters were at war with each other. But I couldn't not go to HaBima where the actors didn't act but prayed and, poor souls, still idolized Stanislavskii's theater" (Marc Chagall, "My "Work in the Moscow Yiddish Theater," translated in this book, pp. 149-50). And Efros wrote about HaBima at that time, "It was supported by an amazing amalgam of Zionists, the Rabbinate, parts of the Communist Party, and those liberal anti-Semites who considered the language of the Bible the only thing bearable about the Jews" (Abram Efros, "The Artists of Granovskii's Theater," translated in this book, pp. 153-57).

It is possible that the HaBima director, Vakhtangov, considered Chagall as a painter for The Dybbnk, though Chagall himself makes it clear that he could not accept the Stanislavskii

Appendixes I 63 fig. 25

Chagall painting Bella in Green ( ip^4-j^).

64 Benjamin Harshav Catalogue timptta and gouaiht an it/iriu 184.2 X7S4.jm

( III Vi X joS K iiuha) Sun Trtl'ukof CaJ/rry. Mail 2 Love on the Stage 1920 Tempera and gouache on canvas 284.2 X 249.6 cm (in Va X p8 '/, inches) State Tret'iakov Gallery. Moscow J

^^y, A

\ Thtt Wedding Table

Sum Tnl'mioi' CjUit). "11*" 4 Music ip20 Tempera and gouache on canvas 212.4 X lOj.^cm (8^ Vs X 40 V4 inches) State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow

5 Dance 1920 Tempera and gouache on canvas 21}. / X 108 cm (84'/s X 42 'A inches) Stale Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow

6 Drama 1^20 Tempera and gouache on canvas 212.J X lO/.j cm (S^'A X 42'/4 inches) State Tret iakov Gallery. Moscow

7 Literature 1920 Tempera and gouache on canvas 21^.9 X 81.j cm (8^ X 32 inches) Stale Tret'iakov Gallery. Moscow

8 Study for Introduction to the Jewish Theoter Ip20 Pencil, ink, gouache, and watercolor on paper, mounted on hoard ij.} X 4p cm (6 V4 X ip 'A inches) Ai usee national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

/MttTC cAa^»Jic if/^ s,^'

V::-: tl Study for the Jev/ish Theater 1920 Pencil and watercolor on paper {verso) 11.^ X 26.8 cm (4 'A X 10 'A inches) Aluse'e national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

1; \

10 The Green Violinist ca. 1^20 Pencil and waternlor on paper 32 X 22 an (12 Vs X 8Vs inches) Collection Ida Chagall. Paris

^y'^"

^ 11 The Green Violinist (study for Musicj ip20 Pencil, gouache, and watercotor on brown paper

24.7 X /J.J cm (9Y4 X s'A inches) Wi/see national d'art moderne.

I aitre Georges Pompidou, Paris 12 Study for Dance

Ink and watenolor on paper 24.1 X 12. J cm (p 'A X ^ inches) Collection Ida Chagall. Paris

' jm 1

cAau^flii^ y^ y f 13 Study for Dance Ip20 Pencil and ink on paper 24.8 X I}. 4 cm (pV4 X S 'A inches) Co/lection Ida Chagall, Paris 14 Study for Literature Ip20

Pencil, ink, and gouache on paper (recto) 26.8 X 11.^ cm (10 'A X 4 'A inches) Mime national d'art moderne. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris ^«S«ocC /^(O C-l^O- «\ a-H_ 15 Set design for Mazel Tov ip20 Pencil and gouache on brown paper on board 47.Sx63.scm (iS'U X 2S inches) Collection Ida Chagall. Paris

Jti

.«;r 16 Set design for Mazel Tov ip20 Pencil and watercolor on paper

2S.S x}4.scm

( 10 X 14 inches) Collection Ida Chagall. Paris 17 Set design for It's a Lie Ip20 Pencil and gouache on paper 22.^ X }0 cm 8 ( '/s X II % inches) Collection Ida Chagall. Paris '^ \

mm^BBSSIHHT

}

1. c****

li^^ ..... 18 Costume design for Mikhoels ipio Pencil and watercolor on paper 2j X 2jcm

( 10 Vs xloVs inches) Collection Ida Chagall, Paris

19 Man >vith Long Nose (costume design for Sholem

Aleichem Evening J Ip20 Pencil and watercolor on paper 2y X ip.^ cm (lO Vs X jVs inches) Collection Ida Chagall, Pans

20 Woman with Child (costunit: design for Sholem

Aleichem Evening ) igzo Pencil and gouache on paper 2j.y X20.}cm (lO Vs X 8 inches) Collection Ida Chagall. Paris

21 Portrait of the Artist's Sister Aniuto ipio Oil on canvas p2.} X jo-i cm {i6 '4 X 2J Vs inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 48.1172x91 "

-iiiTi:^^^^^^ r^^HQj^ ^Mff^ ^IHMl m ^1^' ALuJ %

" Jj

1^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^m fl 'I/O ^m |^^iU|«l^^ M ^V ^^^^^P^s^^^^l ^^^^^^B ,^^^H|HB^^^' ^K^ ^ ^MM$y ^^HBL '"^-"^Ji

i'.ta;^^H [HIHUL^SHH! i^HIHHftifll 22 The Soldier Drinks 1911 - 12 Oil on canvas log. I X p4.^cm (43 X j/'/, inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 49.1211

23 Paris Through the Window 1915 Oil on canvas ijS-S X 141.4 cm fjj /4 X jj- % inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Gift, Solomon R. Guggenheim j/.4j8

24 The Flying Carriage 1915 Oil on canvas 106. y X 120.1cm

(42 X 47 'A inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 49.1212

25 Quarrel ca. 1914 Gnuache and pencil on cream wove paper 28.S X 24.1cm (11 'A X p Vi inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Gift. Solomon R. Guggenheim 41.436 c4^^^

V>S^BIWHMi^V<- 26 Remembrance ca. ipi8 Gouache, india ink, and pencil on paper JI.7 X 22.^ cm (12 Vz X 8 Vs niches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Gift. Solomon R. Guggenheim 41,440

27 The Dream Ip20 Gouache, pencil, ink. and bronze paint on paper ^2.1 X 4S-2 cm (12V4 X 1/ inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Gift. Solomon R. Guggenheim 41.447 K 28 In the Sno>v 1922 lea. ipjo Gouache and ink on paper 2^.6 X }i. 4 cm (9 Va X 12 Vs inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Gift. Solomon R. Guggenheim 4i.4Si

29 Musician

Supplementary sheet to

Mein Leben ("My LifeJ, io I no Etching and drypoint on paper Paper. 44.1 x }4.pcm (17 Vs X /J V4 inches); plate: 44.$ x ^4.9 cm (loVs X 8 Vs inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum iS.j^j 4'.' > '.., ' . . 30 Green Violinist 1925-24 Oil on canvas Ip8 X 108.6 an (78 X 42 ¥4 inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Gift. Solomon R. Guggenheim 57.446

I and the Village ca. 192^ - 24 ? Gouache, watenolor, and pencil on paper SP X }0 cm f/j Vs X II Vs inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Mmeuyn, Gift. Solomon R. Guggenheim 41.4^$

\ p

ChaCjoXt - ^ -^XC

^ JcJamx Z/'-^^a /T^^ Jy^/>-'^^'-y/f^^t^^_ 32 The Soldier Drinks M. ip2j - 24 Gouache on paper (fj.j X 48.^ cm (2^ X 19 inches) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Gift, Solomon R. Guggenheim 41.4S9 JtalC CJn.;:/J'-

Texts and Documents

Edited by Benjamin Harshav Translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav The Art of Marc Chagall The Emperor's Clothes Abram Efros

This first book on Marc Chagall, written in Russian by Abram Efros Here is a book about an artist — young but already famous — and lakov Tugendhol'd, was published in Moscow by Helicon in ipi8. perhaps the most brilliant of our hommes d'aujourd'hui, but one It includes two contributions by Efros and one by Tugendhol'd as well who has experienced a hard lot: to be recognized without as thirty reproductions of the artists paintings and graphics. The book being understood. Marc Chagall fell under the wheel of one bears the inscription, "composed with the help of the Circle forJeicish of those quiet artistic revolutions that seem to occur unnoticed National Aesthetics 'Schomir. and coincidentally, but whose victims include the most unusual talents.

What happened? What happened is the deepest rupture, still unnoticed and unaccounted for, of the most solid relationships between traditional antagonists — the artist and the masses. Oh, the roles have changed in an amazing way! The imperially conservative masses — Her Highness the Masses, the masses, slandered and adored, whom all revolutionaries of art have cursed and yet tried to captivate; the masses surrounding the artist like guards around Saint Sebastian, the masses marching over the corpses of innovators, the implacable, stubborn, pursuing, stinging, branding masses — what has happened to her in our time? We see before us those strange idyllic years when the masses began, obsequiously, to accept everything the creative caprice of the artist offered her. She became his searching slave. She agreed to everything. She blessed everything with her thousand-mouth blessing: nothing appalled her — and nothing surprised her! The grief of many young artists who

wished, in vain, to have their own period of rejection is understandable and legitimate: the masses really violated the good canons of rejection, established by the experience of so

many heralds of new values in art. Poor Chagall! He too experienced the meaning of this popular complacency, the worrying smile of devotion, and the frowning brows of attention. He too knew that if they hail a recognized writer so as not to read him, they hail a recognized artist so as not to look. Shuffling through an exhibition, one figure throws to another, hurrying to sneak by Chagall: ..." "Ach, Chagall . . . He is very talented — "Yes-yes . . .

, Very-very . . . " — and, relieved, they vanish into the next gallery, where they regain human language and, with a profusion of words, they burst into excitement before the

comme il fant canvases of some Excellency.

The Emperor's clothes . . . Andersen's tale . . . till the

first fool screams: "The Emperor is naked. ..." Well, this is so understandable! Art blinds like Lady Godiva with her nakedness. That's why experienced viewers and true appreciators, art historians and art critics — all wear glasses and increase their size every year. But the masses can glue her eyes to the forbidden crack without fear: she won't go blind because she doesn't see anything anyway.

Art criticism is often an act of grace in relation to the

profane, and an act of justice in relation to the artist; it teaches the former to see and gives the latter an opportunity

to be understood. Must it linger at the deaf lawsuit between Chagall and his viewers? It seems that the time has come to

stand up between them, especially since the artist is right and, this time, the viewers are not so guilty — for Marc Chagall put before them truly the most difficult problem: about the

boundaries of what is permitted in art.

1 34 Texts and Documents Perhaps all we now need to do in relation to Chagall is just Chagall Ahrani Efros to forgive his present boldness for his great future. Or is there some third point ot view trom which another "angle on

I. The Nature of His Art Chagall" opens up, in which his present creation is no longer

1. He enters the room the way practical people walk in, a madness or throwing dust in your eyes, but is artistically with confidence and precision, overcoming space, striding justitied and psychologically convincing in its mundane

forcefully, testifying to a consciousness that the earth is earth absurdities, and where the c]uestions of inexperienced and only earth. But look: at a certain step, his body totters people — "why does he do it?" — will be met by us, the and snaps drolly; like Pierrot collapsing in halt in a puppet viewers "who came to Chagall, " with the same astonishment theater, fatally stung by betrayal and bending slightly with which Chagall himselt meets the visitors to his sideways, cracked, with an expression apologizing tor some exhibition who pour onto his pictures their "why?" and "what guilt unknown to us, Chagall approaches, shakes hands — for?"— Yes, exactly. and sits down obliquely, as it tailing into the chair. Chagall has

the beaming tace ot a young fawn; but in conversation, the 3. It is hard to get close to Chagall because you have to kindly softness sometimes evaporates like a mask, and then overcome his contradictions, to be able to synthesize them. we think that the corners ot his lips are too sharp, like arrows, Behind the elements ot his art thrusting out in all directions, and he bares his teeth tenaciously, like an animal, and the gray- you have to tincl one axis and a general guiding torce blue kindness of his eyes too otten shines with the tury ot dominating the multitude ot colortul parts. strange explosions, perspicacious and blind at the same time, Chagall — a master of mundane life, but also Chagall —

making his interlocutor think he is probably retlected in some a visionary; Chagall — a storyteller, but also Chagall — a fantastic manner in the mirrors ot Chagall's eyes, and perhaps philosopher; a Russian Jew, a Hasid — but also a pupil of will later recognize himselt in one ot those green, blue, red, French Modernism; but also, in general, a cosmopolitan tlying, dishevelled, folded-over, twisted people — in Chagall's fantasist, soaring like a witch on a broomstick above the globe future paintings. And when hours pass in conversation, talking and in his swooping flight carrying behind him a multitude about the dear mundane world, work, his wite, his chiki, ot various particles from a multitude of various lives that Chagall suddenly boils over with some prophetic phrase like: descend in a swarm on his canvases when times ot meditation

'"We talk only as if before God, our way is taultless because it is and creativity emerge, and the flowing and roiling elemental God's way ..." — we are no longer amazed; we even force ot Chagall's visions is graphically transformed into understand Chagall, we can see what strong but rational- images and colors.

intangible threads link Chagall's phantasmagoric expressions Were Chagall only a visionary, it would not be ditficult to with his stories about dear daily lite, illuminating it and accept him, as it was not ditticult to accept the visions of permeating it with light, and opening, behind the first plane Curlanis. It would be even easier were Chagall a pure depicter of his words, a second, third, tourth, and more planes — the of mundane life, even it he were the most left and radical planes of his soul. They are as inevitable in Chagall and as among the artists creating torms of new realist painting today: essential to his tlesh and blood as those unexpected gray we are already experienced enough with various "deformations" strands cutting through the bright curling hair ot the not-yet- not to be scared ot them, and perhaps even to tind some charm thirty-year-old artist. in them. Finally, it would not be difficult to be tempted by the

possibility ot deciphering a convoluted and complex allegory if

2. His art is as ditticult as Chagall himselt: to love him, Chagall's headless and green people were only allegories that you have to get close to him, and to get close, you have to go could be changed into a simple and easily understood parable, through the slow and insistent temptation ot penetrating like the monsters, scarecrows, and cripples in Goya's etchings.

his shell. Because the tirst impression gets helplessly entangled But Chagall is neither this nor that nor the other. His in the contradictions and idiosyncracies of Chagall's art. visions live entirely in the contines ot the simplest mundane

That Chagall is very talented can be seen right away; but lite, while his mundane life is entirely visionary. The people why does he do all those strange things? Why is this and objects ot daily lite are permeated with the nature of marvelously painted old Jew green? And another have red and specters, but these Chagallian specters are by no means green hands.-' And a third have an identical miniature Jew shadows with no mass or circumference or hue, and whom standing on his head, just turning to the other side? In the chopping or stabbing is as senseless as chopping or stabbing

belly of a horse we see an unborn colt, and two human tigures the air. Chagall's spectral daily life has all the palpability and protrude from under his hooves. The head ot an old woman has weight ot normal objects and bodies. And if, nevertheless,

leaped oft and is tlying upward, and the headless body swittly he is governed by some law that tears him apart and brushes sinks down to a cow standing on the root ot a house. And the people, animals, and objects around the air, contounds all logic girl with a bouquet — a boy glued to her lips, folded up in the and sense ot earthly proportions and interrelations, the poor

air, around her head, like a cat hurled upward; an ox has a law of allegory or the low law of a crossword puzzle is least

man's jacket and human hands, and sits pensively leaning on guilty in it; we face here not a logical game, but an authentic, his elbow, between two bare feet dangling trom his shoulders, unconditional seeing ot an immense internal saturation. which probably belong to that teminine head covered with a

kerchiet, the nape ot her neck hanging down, who spits into 4. You can understand Chagall only through empathy, not his mouth. And the man looking through a window at Paris through comprehension. The law ot detormation, which gives has a Janus-head — one tace torward, one tace backward; and such a strange countenance to Chagall's works — that law, the cat with a girl's tace looks trom the windowsill at two which moves the absurdities and strangenesses of children's

people lying with their heads end to end at the toot ot the stories, inventions, and fears — is the same law that creates the Eittel Tower and as tall as the tilted multistoried buildings all phantasmagoric world ot Jewish national mysticism, which

around. . . . endeavored in the great movement ot Hasidism miraculously

What is it — disease or mischief, that particular aesthetic to transtorm the mundane lite ot poverty and suttering of mischiet ot the young, with which so many great artists begin shtetl existence. their creative path? The tavorite and primary link between events in stories

Texts and Documents 1 35 children tell is the word "suddenly," which is not at all The internal line of his creative work passed through those mechanical or external — otherwise the pure truthfulness of chronological boundaries amazingly whole. Chagall had no

childish fantasy would have brushed it aside; on the contrary, interruptions, no treading water, no deviations. The originality

the word "suddenly" expresses the very essence and intimate of Chagall's art was evident from the beginning and it always nature of that elemental force of unlimited possibilities, went its own way; the boundaries of the above-mentioned which, in the child's eye, abound in the world; the word external periods of development indicated only turning points "suddenly" merely warns the listener that this omnipotent, and the interrelations of the two major elements of his work.

elemental force will splash one of its caprices on him. If we These elements, inseparably linked to each other from translate this "suddenly" into adult language, we get "miracle." Chagall's first steps, are the genre of mundane life and But not "miracle" in the sense of an unusual and rare visionary mysticism. Chagall's earliest paintings created the exception violating the laws of nature, but "miracle" as a basic "Chagallian" impression: the unreal countenance of real

habitual element of daily life, a "miracle" that denies the life. The Chagall of those works is a dreamy child who grew up very possibility of "life without miracle," and asserts that in a Hasidic family in a Jewish shtetl. But childhood and

"anything may happen and does"; and this is precisely the Hasidism mean a dream multiplied by a dream; this is the world perception that has created the practical miracle-making source of the boundless ore of Chagall's fantasy. And the

of Hasidism in the modern history of the Jews. mundane life around him is the life of a small Vitebsk town;

Such an internal belief that "anything may happen" speaks that is, the very quintessence of everyday life, the very thick of in Chagall's work. Therefore, you can penetrate his art without the most pitiful poverty and opaque existence.

breaking the shell only if you rouse in yourself the vestiges of Chagall's dream and the shtetl existence had either to break childhood dreams, reviving in your soul those forgotten each other or find a higher and integral unity. Art gave Chagall sensations, when the fear of a dark room lived in us, for we the redeeming synthesis. Chagall's painting showed the light knew that the hairy hands of some monster may penetrate the in the humble poverty of the people, streets, cattle, and huts of

desolate and black walls and drag us off, and the old chair may his little Lyozno, which he depicted with all the acuity of love

suddenly bare its teeth and pounce on us. for his hometown. Chagall's childish vision and Hasidic What's the difference between the demands offered the mysticism discovered a world of miracle in the daily round. reader by Hoffmann's fantastic world and the fantastic world of There are two paintings. The Wedding of 1908, and The Baron Miinchhausen? Isn't it that Hoffmann requires belief in Funeral of 1909, where we can observe precisely and profoundly

his unrealities, and Miinchhausen demands disbelief'' Isn't this how his hometown existence is transformed in the young

the foundation on which they build their respective effects? Chagall, and how he constructs his canvases. First of all, there

Like Hoffmann, Chagall needs a spectator who believes in him; is a simple story about a simple event from simple life. A story his spectator must be able to succumb to the unrealities of his with no details and no makeup, laconic and clear. The Wedding: paintings and visions, to entrust himself to their special logic two musicians walk in the street, behind them come the just as he can abandon himself to the flow of Hoffmann's bridegroom and bride, followed by an old man and woman and

inventions. That is why, when a naive spectator approaches two children, and three more relatives bring up the rear; a Chagall with his naturalistic criteria and angrily points out water-carrier and a merchant, a woman and a couple of kids

"Chagall's absurdities, " the artist can only wonder bitterly: he have stopped in the middle of the street and are watching the truly understands nothing in his spectators' indignation, for procession, and in back, a Jew with long coattails excitedly

they do not measure his art with the same yardstick as he. shakes his hands in the air.

An axiom in the cognition of art states that the art of every The protocol of daily life! But what a remarkable face it all

master is a country with its own special laws; to understand has: as in children's drawings, people are higher than the an artist in this sense implies succumbing to those laws and buildings because people are more important than buildings,

approaching the external manifestations of his work — and the perspective of the street is sharply reared up for, paintings and statues — from the inside, from the creative will otherwise, not everybody would be seen, and not everything

of the artist. That is why, if Chagall's art is invincibly chaotic would be clear to us spectators — and is it possible not to and hopelessly senseless when approached from the outside and show us anything in this Lyozno heaven, including the measured with the illegitimate yardstick of realistic-mundane streetlamp, raised like a torch above the procession? As in

painting, it is, nonetheless, clear and opens up to you almost Hasidic legends, the figures of the Jews in Chagall's country schematically if you follow its own internal logic. are unusual and transformed: yes, those are shtetl Jews, but they are apparently made of some special material, and we

5. In the development of Chagall's art so far, three periods won't be astonished if the whole procession suddenly rises up

clearly emerge. External boundaries determine the first as a into the air, where the fiddler will go on chirping and the preparatory, provincial-Petersburg period, when Chagall came bridegroom will take the bride — we shall not be astonished

from his "Vitebsk Province to St. Petersburg to study painting, because what we see is "life inside a miracle," and perhaps the

attended Bakst's school, and worked on his first independent Jew with long coattails, shaking his hand, is prophesying paintings. The second period — abroad; Chagall left for Paris, about this miracle, the birth of the Messiah out of this new where he became "Chagall," impressing the turbulent Bohemia couple, for believers expect the Messiah from every wedding.

of La Ruche with his unusual canvases, which promoted him to In The Funeral, Lyozno existence reveals its mystical nature

the ranks of the most interesting "masters of tomorrow," and even more clearly: again everything is simple and everything is which were taken triumphantly to exhibitions of the new art in chimerical, but too simple and too chimerical. In the middle of

Berlin and Amsterdam. In this period such chimerical canvases the reared-up street, between the huts, lies the corpse in a were created as Paris Through the Window, The Carter, The Calf shroud, surrounded by burning candles; a giant gravedigger Seller, The Brides, and so on, with their headless bodies, two- raises his shovel; a woman spreads her hands high; and above faced heads, and flying cows. Finally, the current period — the them all, astride the roof of a house, a strange Jew, bent over period of his return to Russia at the outbreak of the Great War, his violin, draws a melody — in harmony with the wind when Chagall created his Vitebsk cycle: The Barbershop, The howling under the glowering sky, tearing up the clouds, and Shtetl Lyozno, In the Provinces, On the Outskirts of Vitebsk, The shaking the eaves, while over the huts a shoe and sock hang Prayingjew, The Birthday, The Guitarist, and others. instead of si^ns.

1 36 Texts and Documents It is amazing that, even in those early years, Chagall uses other periods were expressed here.

color and hue as means oi characterizing and influencing the Be that as it may, in any case, the purely artistic psyche ot the viewer, and not just for conveying the realistic- organization of those Paris compositions is no doubt existential coloring oi the objects. Chagall goes hand in hand remarkable. Channeling the minute chaos of formless visions

here with the most progressive and sensitive masters ot our art. into a plastic trame, it was possible only by a strong artistic The painting of our days consciously uses the influence of color welding ot all parts of the picture. Cubism helped Chagall here

not only on the eye, but also on the spiritual world: the too, for if Cubism is especially strong in anything, it is in the

painterly texture ot the picture is assigned the task ot evoking iron functionality of its artistic constructs, in that utterly a direct reaction in the mternal world ot the spectator by granite solidity that characterizes the constructions Cubism circumventing the plastic image, playing on the spectator as on erects trom parts of objects that had disintegrated into their a keyboard with color, line, layering ot paint, and curve ot the components. Chagall knew how to achieve the same thing — line; sometimes the artist even tries to characterize an object by he channeled the tlood of his anarchic force into the sturdiest the very selection ot colors. Chagall promoted this "psychic artistic shores. The raging colors and precise rhythms of the value of color" from the start — subtly and treely. And perhaps Paris canvases bound them as with a steel hoop, and their

it is because of its "color mystique" more than anything else magniticent organization calmed the viewer's eye, excited by

that the realistic lite in his pictures is permeated with the order the internal chaos of the picture. ot a difterent, miraculous existence. 7. Chagall was tiiced with a choice: either return his art to the 6. When Chagall turned up in Paris and had a chance to get forms ot the real world or stop being an artist. You cannot float close to the very center ot world art, the balance between the in the melted stream of tuzzy mystical visions for years, for this

everyday-lite and the visionary elements ot his art was deeply fire not only illuminates but also consumes. A third solution is disturbed. Above the little world ot Lyozno, with its small possible: mannerism, when, with a gelid hand and ashen heart, dimensions and domestic density, hovered the monstrosities the artist produces imitations of himself and offers false visions and spaces of a Cyclopean city. What Chagall encountered in as true. But of course, Chagall, with his unusual ultimate

the art world ot Paris shattered all the clamps ot his everyday sincerity, could not become his own follower.

images and themes. Chagall's mysticism, in its very essence, in His return to Russia at the start of the war was a cure for

its striving to transtorm the countenance ot daily lite, carried a Chagall. Like a prodigal son returning to his father's home, he

centrifugal force striving to rend the trozen forms of observable returned to his Jewish shtetl world. He attached himselt to it

existence. However, that early Chagall was still too attached to with the same zeal and fervor of spirit with which, in Paris, he

"the earth," to "his Lyozno," not to hold the destructive crumbled and eroded its poor forms. The Vitebsk cycle of

impulses ot his tantasy in check. But now, Paris removed all his Chagall's paintings emergeci in a teverish and whining sweep

shackles, and his Lyozno daily lite was literally torn to pieces and Chagall's devotion to work, always great, here knew no by the unlimited explosion. bounds. Chagall created dozens of canvases, each a precise Chagall landed in Paris at the moment when Cubism was at embrace, arms stretched out to everything Chagall saw again in

the zenith ot its triumph and intluence. That is, from the his homeland. He cultivated and lavished all the subtlety and outside, in the torm ot a mandatory aesthetic program, Chagall delicacy ot his amazing palette and the nobility ot a refined contronted those aspects ot Cubism to which his own art strove painting to record respecttully the tace ot his reacquired from inside him. Cubism splintered the whole visual world homeland.

into pieces and parts in the name ot an abstract aesthetic The tattered parts ot Lyozno daily life are reunited; and "the principle; but the mysticism ot Chagall's creation, albeit by soul of things" that stormed in the general stream return to

different laws, also attempted to tear up the cover ot daily life. their objects; and in Chagall's painting, the previous Jewish

If, by its nature, the cold, heady force of Cubism was strange to world reappears. Chagall paints every alley, every person, every

Chagall's tlery immediacy, in its results, the triumphant house ot his home places. In the Vitebsk cycle, his whole

Cubism gave it exactly what it needed. Most important, in the family parades before us, young and old, childhood friends, eyes ot the masters ot the new art. Cubism destroyed the value neighbors, street urchins, beggars, houses, huts, trees, grass,

ot any re-creation ot objects in their normal, "everyday " aspect; cattle — Chagall even paints the forbidden pig affectionately,

the mandatory, essential "detormation " ot objects was for truly everything is blessed and holy in this reacquired daily

pronounced as the basic principle ot art. Thus, the doors were lite. And at the same time, what a ditterence trom the daily life

wide open tor Chagall's fantasy. The raging force erupted. Some of his first, pre-Paris period! If there Chagall's mystical force

terrible cataclysm crumbled Chagall's native world ot shtetl strove to break out ot objects, here it strives from the outside

Judaism. That cycle ot chimerical canvases, described above, to get into things. In The Wedding ot 1908, people still walk on which created Chagall's resounding tame among the innovators the earth and we only teel that, at any minute, they may leave

and their adherents, and evoked a similar rage in the it and soar in the air, where the true nature ot their being

philistines and Naturalists — that cycle is a truly shattering draws them; whereas in the paintings ot the Vitebsk cycle,

confession, a stunning story of a fiery storm which gusted over these people, on the contrary, are still soaring in the air, as in ..." Chagall's art in Paris. "Foil . . . Clowning — but I don't the paintings ot the Paris period, but they are already know anything more palpable and visual in its power ot descending to the earth and soon will have to land finally and

persuasion and sincerity than those extraordinary paintings. It stand on their ittt. Thus a young couple hovers over the shtetl truly took a lot of internal courage and artistic talent to in the painting To A[y Wije; thus an old Jew with a sack soars imprint the rage ot the storming torce so directly and over the town in On the Outskirts oj Vitebsk; thus above the girl plastically. Perhaps those who value this cycle above anything with a bouquet in The Birthday a young man has frozen in the

else in Chagall are not so wrong, tor such a conjunction of air kissing her lips. Even whatever has landed on the earth still tense depth and artistic significance did not recur in him later has some instability in these paintings, a lack of tirmness like

on. Incidentally, this assessment would be true only it what the tlrst touching ot the earth after a long flight, as if the Chagall told us here did not have such an exclusively narrow, earth's gravity had not yet tully embraced this new Chagallian

personal character, it that broad, generally signitlcant value ot daily lite. In this sense, we must note with what fragility and the internal experience that marks his creativity in the two lightness people and things stand on the Vitebsk canvases, and

Texts and Documents ; 137 how even houses and rooms are still unstably attached to the II. The Palette. Graphics.

earth. That is the source of the strange coloring of objects, the I. Russian art may be called art in makeup. You must not get

green, violet, red bodies and faces of people; this is the heritage too close to it; otherwise, instead of a hero, you will face XY in

of the Paris whirlwind, its mystical colorfulness, the glow of its makeup. Russian artists are charming storytellers, clever stage

colorful fires. directors, and sensitive psychologists. But how many of them can also be called masters? In Russian painting, you enjoy the

8. Today, Chagall stands in the very heat of his Vitebsk insightful vivacity of portrait characteristics as much as the period — what the results will be we can only vaguely guess. accuracy of scenes from everyday life and the almost There are reasons to think that Chagall's present road leads him frightening prescience of historical resurrections; Russian

to that "grand art" of transformed daily life indicated in several paintings can be read inexhaustibly. But do not get close to of his recent big works — in the magnificent The Prayingjew, their canvases! Beyond the figures and objects, when your eye in The Green Old Man, and such; here the shtetl Jews have detects the rough surface of a hastily painted canvas and your grown into enormous national figures, deeply rooted in their gaze follows the clods and ruts of the daubs — what mundane typicality and, at the same time, endowed with all despondency overcomes you among this swampy overflow of the internal significance of a symbol. paint! With fatal clarity, you will distinguish that the traits

However, new traits have recently begun to break through that captivated you are not art, but only the makeup of art, in

in Chagall's works, traits ot an even denser, hotter, hastier, which all effects are calculated on "looking from afar, " "looking

voluntarily obsequious submission to "the tyranny of small from a distance, " "looking from an auditorium," through the

things," the rule of dear daily life. I saw a new series by deluding prism of the footlights. The unstable layers of paint

Chagall: his dacha cycle. A man lives in a dacha with a front hold shakily onto the canvas, the color is exaggerated, the tone

yard with green trees, on the balcony hang red dotted curtains, is approximate, the contour is dangling.

on the table sits a golden samovar, and, in a wicker basket, Art in makeup. ... I remember Verhaarn in the Tret'iakov

scarlet and blue berries — here he is, man in Paradise, as if, Gallery seeking masters of the brush and finding only makeup after a hard earthly road, he now abides "in a place of light, a artists. We had no way to respond to him when he filtered our place of grains, a place of peace. ..." painters through the golden sieve of the French palette — a

Is it a final reconciliation with everydayness that the palette of masters and mastery — and hall after hall and artist subdued artist has to go through? But what will then link his after artist flew somewhere into non-being. We ourselves often "grand art" with the "apology for a dacha "? called our art provincial, but we believed that a provincial

How can we know? . . . Except for guesses, what does aware of his provinciality was not hopeless. Yet nevertheless we

Chagall leave us? We must admit courageously that there is did not value our art so poorly. nothing more hopeless than predicting his future, for among Verhaarn's judgment was the judgment of the metropolis of

our artists, there is no spirit more free and unexpected in his art on a provincial school; and when, stooped and pulling the

creative ideas than this God-intoxicated Chagall. . . . hanging threads of his endless moustache and dropping precise evaluations, the poet ran from an ancient icon to Shchukin's Lady in a Cap, and drew in the air with his long fingers before Levitskii's Anna Davia; when, throwing his glasses on his nose before Sylvester Shchedrin, Fedotov, or Ivanov, he pronounced ambiguous aphorisms about Cezanne, Corot, and the Dutch; and later, without stopping, slowing down pensively only before the bursts of snow in Surikov's Morozofa, swept by even Repin, Levitan, and Serov, to nod affirmatively before Vrubel's Portrait of My Wife, and to finish with a deeply satisfied

"Voila!" . . . before Somov's Lady in Blue — the circle of art was drawn by him with authority and conviction. Should we reconcile ourselves to that? But what can we do?

That's how it is, you cannot circumvent or get around it; our

art is the art of painters but not of masters; it has no taste for metier, and every name that augments the short dynasty of

Russian masters of the brush is a true event.

2. How did the provincial Chagall turn out to have that rarest of gifts denied so many great and praised talents? An accidental caprice of fate? Or the buds of a French seed falling on the sickly sharpened sensibility of Chagall's talent? Be that

as it may, the large pleiade of the young generation of our

artists counts only one master, and this master is Chagall. A skillful and excellently precise brush; now fondly licking, now scratching; now bathing in the even ripple of the daubs,

now scattering marvelous "Chagallian " little dots, drops and patterns, joyful and resounding, scarlet, green, yellow, leaping and coiling, like deposits of posies and Chinamen on the joyous wallpaper of our half-forgotten nursery; the surface — exquisitely worked — now rough, sometimes protruding with the bald spots of the background, sometimes swelling with

layered iiills of paint; an even and smooth growing and waning of the tone, precise and finished, reminiscent of the growth of a range of sounds under the fingers of a flawless pianist; and a

1 38 Texts and Documents special soft film of velvet, or even the delicate down of a peach, 4. A painter turning to graphics becomes a philosopher of his lying over everything and evoking in the spectator a wish to own work.

touch and caress the painting, to feel its grain with his This will be recognized when we recall that graphics are the

fingertips — this is Chagall's palette, transforming the colorful most abstract and generalizing kind of art. They are more cover of his paintings into a kind of geographical relief map, calculation than impulse, more thought than feeling, more

where you can travel long and fruitfully, conscious that the prose than poetry. Therefore, painting is always more irregularities, convexities, and concavities of every centimeter mysterious than graphics; and an artist, shifting from the are utterly justified. palette to the pen, exposes himself and carries his true face out A magician among the images and visions of his paintings, of the dusk into the light. Perhaps we must even say that the among his tubes of paint, ringing his brushes and knocking his graphics of a painter are only the formulas of his painting — easel, he also conjures up the image of a veritable alchemist in condensations composed of the main features of his art. a pointed hat knocking his retorts and test tubes, where the Chagall turns to graphics suddenly, often, and in a storm. philosopher's stone crystallizes in smoke and flame. What a The painterly series and the graphic series intersect and stew of spices had to be activated to create the painting of The interact. In their parts, motifs, and topics, they are amazingly

Green Loi'ers, Mtiriaseiika with a Dog, The Sweeper, The Praying close. There are graphic themes that later became paintings; Jewl Only such an elasticity of artistic means of depiction, there are paintings that were eventually transposed into paper

operating with "infinitely small" units of painterly elements, and ink. Chagall is a graphic artist as much as he is a painter.

allowed Chagall not to get lost in the whirlwind fogs of his Therefore, his graphics are not a peripheral branch of his art.

spectral existence, to fill the skin and bones of the simplest They leave no room for the accidental. These are not fruits of beings and objects with the movement of some flaming and creative pauses or fuzzy ruminations, drawn on pieces of paper tenuous matter, and force us spectators to believe that the as most artists draw them if they are not masters of graphics by axioms of the regular painterly experience — that presumably profession. Chagall's graphic works are even denser, fuller, and a body has "body color," a large object is larger than a small more saturated than his paintings. This is how they should be, one, things are not but seem to be, etc., etc. — are just a for if, on canvas, Chagall creates his images, on paper he thinks

boring delusion of a tired routine that he. Marc Chagall, has about them, investigates their nature. In this sense, it is

the authority and power to waive. significant that Chagall is now especially and eagerly absorbed

in graphics. Sometimes it seems that this profusion of graphic

3. We are talking about Chagall's painterly art at its peaks and material indicates that Chagall faces the closure of the current

in a static perspective, relying on the best of his recent period of his painting, for the artist is too cognizant of his experiments. Obviously the history of the development of work to be able to stay long enough with the current themes

Chagall's mastery would have brought some qualifications into and devices. However, it would be most incautious to our description. However, even in this most recent and exaggerate the meaning of this. Chagall never becomes accomplished stage, in one respect Chagall is not without fault: analytical, classifying, cerebral. He is always ardent; and, even

He cannot be coarse. He is not sufficiently courageous. Like an if his works on paper are just a philosophy of his art, it is adolescent boy, he hasn't yet emerged from the immature cognate to that fiery philosophy with which the Kabala seared plumpness of his limbs. He cannot force his brush to scream the thought and heart of Judaism, running God's chariot, the and shock. He does not command resounding and terrifying Merkava, through the spheres of the universe; it is cognate to tones. He may be angry, raging, sometimes even furious, but the ecstatic world view of Hasidism — and, in the Christian not fearsome. Like the youth Jeremiah, summoned by God to domain, to the systems of the Church mystics. serve a prophet, he could have repeated, "Oh, Lord Yahweh, Therefore, Chagall meditating on his visions, Chagall the

look: I cannot prophesy for I am still a youth. " Blessed be he, draftsman, is perceived even more sharply than Chagall the

that his current period of reconciliation with mundane life painter. Reading Chagall's graphic "book," you read a master's

requires only an elegiac tenderness and a calm joy, and there is compendium of his art — precise, laconic, and lucid: about the room and order for all the delicate and skillful devices of his world of spirit gliding through the world of matter, about the palette. But let us recall his Paris cycle — a cycle of storm, disintegration of daily life exploded by the raging of hidden shock, and chaos. So what? So, our reproach relates primarily to forces, about the delicate and intimate earth gathering and

this period. For his is not the roar of apocalyptic storms; coalescing the scattered parts of beings and things. But here

Chagall whistles on a lyrical pipe, he found sharp, confused, everything is exposed, here there are no unfinished words; this and penetrating tones, for let us not forget that he is a master; is Chagall as he is. and with the ebb and flow of rage and passion, he hurls at us In his painting, the color and tone of the paints, the with a wind-up of the whole great force of his clairvoyance and lightness and accuracy of his brushstrokes, the clever network

talent. But it is not the same brush with which the artist, of daubs obstruct and skim the rage of his spirit that fills the engulfed in the horror of a cataclysm and torn by his spiritual canvas; they seduce with their own soft beauty. In his graphics, pain, hits the trembling and sighing canvas with both hands. however, the furious dynamism of his art appears before us

There is some discrepancy between the tossed-about, torn parts entirely bare. Black clods, black grains of dust, black of objects hanging in the voids of the canvas, and the ornaments, black nets, black pieces of figures and objects, tense insufficiently simple and rigorous, over-subtle and aristocratic as if screwed to the utmost — they truly jump onto the texture of his painterly script. When even the air cracks and spectator, sweep him into their whirlpool, and carry him off. In

shrinks and settles in Cubistic folds and edges, as in his Paris the images of his painting, Chagall is often uncertain. Even

works, then Chagallian anxiety and confusion is not enough. more often, we perceive him with uncertainty; parts of the

One thing we don't yet know: is this softness and lack of painting seem to us overly vague, the visions caught in mid- courage in Chagall's nature, and will lyricism forever be the flight by one wing. Chagall's graphic solutions are crystallized

primary force of his creativity? Or, forged and reinforced with to the highest degree, absolute and final. We think about it time, will Chagall find another language for fiery and fateful first of all when, using Hugo's definition, we say that Chagall

visions of his creation? If that happens, and if the boundaries of created in art a new tremor. his ability and powers thus expand, then Chagall will appear

before us as one of the most accomplished talents of our art. 5. Painting and graphics are, in principle, mutually opposed

Texts and Documents 1 39 and hostile; but in the work of one artist, such a relation between them cannot exist because the hving personahty of the master reconciles them. In this case, they sometimes even color each other. Traits of graphic schematization and sharpness appear in the painting; while, in the graphics, we may observe a certain painterly gamut of tones and glimpses of chiaroscuro.

Such is the case with Chagall. For his painting The Birthday may serve as a telling example of this kind, which emerged in the very heat of his latest graphic "Chagallesques" and obviously bears the imprint of graphic art. But Chagall's graphics, too, are the graphics of a painter, even by virtue of the fact that typically they lack contours and one continuous blot. Chagall has a device that became famous and evoked imitations by his friends and foes, and which constitutes the

axis of his graphic technique; thanks to it, the appearance of an image on paper has the following visibility: from the paper, separate black threads of lines of various degrees of force and delicacy begin to emerge; moving toward the center, they grow denser, tighter, harder, shift into spilling blots, form with them the supporting parts of the image, endow them with a final finish; then they flow onward, again lose density and mass, splay out, become more transparent, thinner, gossamer, again shift into bundles of strings, and, in separate threads, disappear altogether in the surface of the page.

Needless to say, how painterly in its essence is this device, which Chagall uses with amazing, unparalleled mastery. It predetermines both the lack of a counter-line and the possibility of a timely use of graphic chiaroscuro. Thanks to this device, the line of the contour in Chagall becomes really only "implied." Between one part of the image and another

there is no direct link. Only in his mind and involuntarily, through the white blanks of the page, from one net of threads to another, does the spectator carry the line boundary and

define the image. For such an image — and this is the second- most-important result — the white blank of the paper in

Chagall's graphics is not a background for the image but its

part, a living, active substance that forms and individualizes it. Hence, also, the characteristics typical of Chagall: the torn and splayed edges of his figures, the tone of dense and rarified dots/grains of dust around his objects, the rhythmical series of flowers, circles, diamonds, with which he floods the costumes

of his graphic heroes; all these are variants of the basic order as well as echoes of a "Rembrandtian" chiaroscuro of strokes and nets that, here and there, runs through Chagall's page. Today, Chagall has moved into illustrations. He has made a delightful pictorial setting for children's stories. Such a Chagall we didn't know before. The page seems to have swallowed the thick and restless lava of his regular black masses. The boundaries and blots are scattered accurately and even niggardly, reminiscent of the dry pattern of branches in the evening sky. Chagall's pen has become laconic and lucid, he has

subordinated it to himself, for he himself succumbed to the

text of the stories. His painting attained transparency in its

obedience to daily life — it seems that the burden of illustration will supply a purifying simplicity to his graphics.

1 40 Texts and Documents The Artist Marc Chagall lakov Tugendhol'd The attempt of a "literary" explanation does not diminish the artist. On the contrary, his artistic merits are diminished

when he himself is so "anecdotal" that such an explanation is Sasha is three years old — three thousand, superfluous. One can explain Chagall in a literary manner, but and perhaps three times three thousand, he himself is not a storyteller, not an illustrator, but first of all Sasha doesn't measure his age in years. a painter. Remizov, Maka Chagall was born a Jew, grew up in a Lithuanian province, matured in Paris. Those are three biographical moments we can account for in such a seemingly irregular phenomenon as 1. In French exhibitions of recent years, the works of the young Chagall's drolleries. Let us dwell on each of them. artist from Vitebsk, Marc Chagall, attracted my attention. Much that would seem "strange" in another perspective is Fiery-colored like Russian l/ihok, expressive to the point of explained by Chagall's national Semitic origin. I don't mean grotesque, fantastic to the point of irrationality, they stood out simply the proximate meaning of this origin, not just that not only among the works of Russian painters, but also against Chagall grew up in a Jewish milieu. Marc Antokolskii, to the the backgrounci of the young French painting. I remember the end of his life, never learned to express himself correctly in impact they made in the Autumn Salon among the "Cubist" Russian; nevertheless Stasov Stasov — the major Russian critic canvases of Le Fauconnier and Delaunay, those Fauvist who originated the interest in and collection of Jewish folk innovators. While the mind-boggling brick structures of the art — was utterly justified, specifically a propos Antokolskii, in Frenchmen exuded cold intellectualism and the logic of regretting the lack of a national element in the work of analytical thought, what was astonishing in Chagall's paintings "Europeanized" Jews. Stasov wrote, "How much they could was some childish inspiration, something subconscious, have presented to the rest of the world: original melodies, instinctive, unbridled, and colorful. As if by mistake, next to unique rhythms, characteristic expressions, and pristine tones the adult, too-adult, works, works of some child, truly fresh, of the soul!" Isaac Levitan had a lot of soft Jewish melancholy, "barbaric, " and fantastic had landed here. Those multicolored but essentially represented a different strain of the Semitic crooked huts with graves in the middle of the street and a soul — its ability to transform, to resonate with its fiddler chirping on the roof, that fiery-bloody Golgotha with surroundings: in Levitan's landscapes, the objective melancholy Judas removing the ladder, could have repelled with their of Russian nature, sung in the poetry of Tiuchev and Balmont, coarse expression, their savagery of theme, the loudness of their found its highest affirmation. Similarly, we can call Israels and colors. But it was impossible not to see them or not to absorb Pissarro Jewish artists only insofar as the former sounded a note their sharp aroma, because, behind them, you felt the all- of sorrowful intimacy; and in the plein air of the latter, there conquering force of a great talent, and a foreign talent at that. nestled something soulful, unlike the positive impassivity of "Tiens. il y a qiielqi/e chose — c'est tres curieuxV — said the his fellow Impressionists. But this "soulfulness" is in any case Frenchmen, and indeed, in Chagall, you guessed something not a primary but a secondary phenomenon of the Jewish soul. inexplicable in European terms, and therefore "curious," as This sadness is acquired historically, yet not it, but the joy of many things in the "barbaric" polychrome music of the the Song of Songs, lies at the source of Jewish culture. However, Russian ballet seemed curious. could one talk in general about a national substance of the Jews At another exhibition, Chagall showed works refined in in the sphere of art? Isn't it well known that there is no Jewish their polychromy and ornamentation. Headless flying people, art because the biblical religion forbade the creation of "graven sentimentally inspired animals, houses outside of time and images," and the historical conditions of an ever-worrying life space as in a sweet and wild childish dream, were painted in could not be conducive to the flourishing and consolidation of black and white, gold and silver, scarlet, cerise, and other beauty? But first of all, as Stasov once observed, the accepted unusual and subtle shades. Chagall's fantastics and palette view of Jewish art as an empty place does not correspond with seemed overly tense, unhealthy, and delirious, but you couldn't reality. From Stasov 's time on, the collection and study of doubt their sincerity — could such phantoms and such Jewish antiques has been well advanced and it has become clear outbursts of painterly heat be invented on purpose? that, if the creative talents of biblical artists did not materialize Chagall roused interest; merely condescendingly approved or did not survive to our day in the domain of grand art, they and almost boycotted by the powerful in Russia — he was did find their application in small art — in synagogue art and accepted in the bosom of Paris bohemia, invited to exhibit in domestic utensils, in embroideries of the curtains and Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin. But the war stopped his rapid coverings of Torah scrolls, in golden, silver, wooden, filigree, rise — Chagall found himself where he came from: in the and enamel objects, in miniature manuscripts. Religion godforsaken Russian province, in his native 'Vitebsk. The result forbade the representation of man — the artists depicted of his return to his native and familiar places was a series of domestic animals (beginning with the frieze of the palace of studies of mundane life, surprisingly realistic, strong and calm, Hyrkanos). Religion forbade the convex depiction of animals to but quite varied. Chagall is still steeped in searching, in avoid the temptation of idolatry — the artists painted them in frenetic pluralism, at the junction of many roads — like a child colors or concave. It was precisely in the flora and fauna who has before him an infinity of influences, wishes, and ornaments that the decorative talents of Jewish art were opportunities. But even what he has accomplished so far allows expressed — decorative because another, three-dimensional, us to talk about him as an artistic phenomenon, as something relation to the world was forbidden. Hence, its supernatural authentic and original, which has already come to light and character, fully corresponding to the metaphysics that grew begun glittering fantastically. from the biblical consciousness. On the other hand, Jewish art had to develop abilities to transform alien beauty: nomadic in 2. Can one "explain" an artist? Doesn't the creative spirit blow its history, it absorbed elements of Phoenician, Assyrian, wherever and however it wishes? I think, however, that one not Hellenistic, and Arabic culture. Hence its "national" weakness only can but must knock at the promising door and and racial, ancient refinement. inquisitively seek keys to it. To say that an artist is simply In this sense, Bakst's art is undoubtedly "national." what he is, as he is "made," is to say nothing. Perhaps even the Decorative in its nature, eclectic, and penetrating all cultures. I genius of Dostoevski i's psychologism is related causally to that remember what Bakst told me, "I always set myself the goal of minute he experienced on the gallows.

Texts and Documents 141 conveying the music of what is depicted {lambience de I'oenvre), autumn night, calling "everybody who suffers, who is tortured having liberated myself from the bounds of archeology and by fear, whose spirit strives toward freedom" to appear at the

chronology of mundane life." This colorful-musical empathy wedding. Because Rachel's soul, fettered by the mundane life

for the depicted epoch is first of all a sensuous perception, of the inn, in her passionate ecstasy longs for a shining miracle. perception-as-assimiiation — not archeologically, but with its This black night, the night of oaths and miracles, peers sensibility, Eastern-spicy in its coloring and classically refined through the window of Chagall's study The Clock. The heavy

in its linear content — it is the product of some ancient, pendulum counts the centuries-minutes of monotonous life, millennia-old preparation, perhaps a reflection of that and tiny cumbersome figures seek something in the uncanny

Hellenistic Judaism that covered the Jerusalem of Herod's time nocturnal void. . . . in glorious garb of the beauties of Japheth. In his beautiful In another study, two Jews, an old man and a boy, sit at a essay, "Terror antiquus" Viacheslav Ivanov observed this ancient table dreaming in the rainbow, green-orange circle of a lamp.

memory in Bakst's mien, though he glossed over his racial The cheap lamp, smoking like ancient incense, is flaming with antiquity. the gold of a fire (in which the biblical Jews saw the emanation

The same, it seems, should be said about Chagall. No of God), and the gaze of the Jewish boy, drawn to it, is

matter how young he is, the heritage of the ages weighs on enflamed ecstatically: perhaps he sees the redeemer messiah,

him. Just that: "weighs"; the excessive weight of this burden the promised land. . . . Chagall's work has neither literariness explains his hypertrophical nervousness. This does not in the nor "civil grief," but does have some ardent and sorrowful thirst

least contradict Chagall's childishness, which I mentioned at for myth. the beginning of this essay: when a child paints eyes not in

profile but en face, he repeats an ancient experience of archaic 3. But Chagall's fantastics would not be national if it cut off

wisdom. And isn't a wunderkind just this spontaneous and its ties with its soil, the mundane life. There is in it the same mysterious manifestation of an alien experience, accumulated note of strong realism approaching the grotesque, and by inheritance, that dwells in him and plays with his childish abandoned irony approaching self-mockery, that had to lurk in

fingers? Every one of us is farsighted and fantasizes in sleep; the Jewish soul as a natural self-defense of life, as the instinct but in the sober morning, we catch at the escaping dream in of historical self-preservation. Medieval miniatures of Jewish

vain! Chagall's art is of the night: he knows how to remember artists are full of humorous grotesques; humor fills the

dreams; and in the dreams the present is entangled with the parables, fables, proverbs even now inseparable from Jewish past. speech. In Bialik's poem describing the passionate waiting for The roots of Chagall's painting go into distant depths and the Messiah, he didn't forget the details of the coarsely

its buds are swathed (and poisoned) by the present. In his realistic, clumsily funny life.

pointed huts and even in the swirling clouds there are echoes of That is not the way the Poles in Wyspianski's play wait for

Egyptian pyramids; in his palette, which I earlier mentioned as the galloping of the Archangel. Waiting for centuries in vain

influenced by the Russian liihok, there is something more did not teach the Jews to combine humor with the pathos of ancient and stronger than the liibok — some exotic tragedy. The eternal wanderer, Ahasverus, whom Chagall liked colorfulness, as if the gamut ot antimony, scarlet, fresh flowers, to depict wandering over the blue cupolas and roofs of a and even the very texture of his painting seems to be color- Russian province, saw so much in his historical age and got so

dense, cosmetically sensitive. In his paintings, there is no Man, used to everything that nothing will crush his eternal passage: forbidden image, or the likeness of God (he does not paint

individual portraits), but there are people and animals. People Tonjours le soleil se Tei

a predator. Like the pig muzzles in Gogol', curious "muzzles" — Beranger, Le jnif errant of bulls and calves peep into his interiors, and then appear as

demonic symbols of the sinful temptation that led Aaron to This is the world irony, I would say, and the premature old

cast an idol of the golden calf at Mt. Sinai. There is something man's wisdom that erupts in Chagall. And everywhere, at the erotic from Sodom, reminiscent of Bosch and Goya, in those thresholds of houses, under snowflakes, and even on the roofs, Chagallian animal faces. his old fiddler, the eternal accompaniment of weddings and

Chagall's fantastics is saturated with the fears and funerals, plays a melody, old as the world and monotonous,

superstitions of Lithuanian Jewry, who experienced the horrors with a recitative. ... I remember my amazement at a study of of Chmielnitskii's pogroms and the Polish-Russian wars, and Chagall's showing a pregnant woman and a pregnant horse. "Is

lives with the prayer-mysticism of Hasidism. Much in its it my fault it always happens like that?" answered the artist. I

fantastics is dark and enigmatic for me, as in the Kabbala. But also recall another work named "What Happens at Home" — a

I feel in it, in those homeless and flying people, a burning crowded Jewish interior where people eat, pray, and give birth,

thirst for the mysterious, a tortured renunciation of the life of and above it all, as in a dream, phantoms of people are flying as the contemporary ghetto, "rancid, swampy, and dirty" (Bialik). if falling from the opened sky. Rozanov, who attached himself Of course, the roots of Jewish mysticism go back to the depth so one-sidedly to the "wedding" essence of the biblical soul,

of Eastern religion, but it flourished along with the would have seen in this painting by Chagall a synthesis of "all persecutions of Judaism — in the discrepancy between the of Israel," a bedroom of world history with its "womb" and

bitter reality and the flights of dreaming. In Wyspianski's "offspring bearing." But this is something else; this is the

tragedy Wesele {The Wedding), it is not the funny invitation of a synthesis of the eternally living mundane life and the fantastics

healthy girl, but the magic oath of the darkly exalted Rachel, hovering above it. Chagall's interior where people eat, pray,

daughter of the innkeeper, that summons the ghosts to the and give birth and where, instead of a ceiling, there is a thick

wedding. She came to the wedding precisely because she sensed blue sky — it is the same "singing hut, " the singing hut of the

the mysticism of the events in this nuptial "singing hut." Ach homeless-fantastic mundane life, by some miracle existing

ta chata rozspiewana] (Oh, this singing hut!) she says to the poet between sky and earth. . . .

and is the first to throw out the window the invitation of the Here we approach the very essence of Chagall's talent; he

142 itxls citicl Documents I sees the real world sharply and senses another world beyond it. sovereign fetish. A good example of this influence is the

In the cynical grotesques ot Chagall there is the tairytale outstanding study The Sweeper — a hard, metal-formed figure quality of capriccio; in the small provincial mundane life, he among heavily swirling provincial dust. Only now, having grasps some great being. ... In this sense, Rozanov's seen Cezanne and El Greco, was Chagall able to paint such retrospective formula "Zion, Babylon, and Vilna" is really architecturally ornamented, compositionally solid, and applicable to Chagall if we substitute Vitebsk for Vilna. truly monumental biblical images as his dour religious Jew Chagall grew up in a crowded provincial ghetto and the images in a black-and-white tallis, resembling a biblical prophet, or of mundane lite pursue him obsessively, even when he describes some other artisan on the background of a pyramid of the subtle and lyrical aloofness of the loving Pierrot and heaped-up huts.

Colombine. But apparently there is some clearing m But this, of course, doesn't mean that Chagall began "provincialism," at b/s street, bis home — into the boundless painting a la Cezanne or Picasso — his mode of observation mystical. The dirty girl Aldonza is no less inspiring than the emerged from the Paris crucible with all its erstwhile beautiful Dulcinea because she leaves room tor a dream. originality. The bliick-and-white harmony oi The PrayingJew Hoffmann, who grew up among philistines, apple-sellers, and perhaps reflected the beauty of black-and-white velvet of the the Tomcat Murr, was a bright storyteller; and Gogol' found synagogue seen in childhood. The influence of Paris was fantastic curios in the stupidity of Russian mundane life. manifest precisely when Chagall returned to his home Chagall senses the supernatural, the mysterious, not only in province. He painted the same motifs that had earlier

Jewish life, but in mundane life in general. He is a student of captivated him, only now they reflected not just a "childish Bakst and Dobuzhinskii, but in the aiithi:ntii:ity of his poetic sensibility," but also the mastery of a mature artist. In provincial observations, no doubt, the student surpassed his the blue domed temple and little houses covered with snow of teachers. For in Chagall's "provincialism" you don't find his EternalJew there is a beautiful, sharp hewing of surfaces. Dobuzhinskii's graphic precision, his metropolitan mockery of The dark, dirty smocks of his Jews became formed and the provinces, but there is some spiritual participation in the articulated in hard, sculpted folds with rusty blue shades. described milieu, an artless naVvete of observing. Dobuzhinskii "Without losing any of its mysticism, the whole Chagallian senses the mysticism of the big city, whereas in the province he world became materially tangible: Chagall learned to see is captivated by the funny and old-fashionecf. Chagall senses dreams while awake, in the middle of the sober day. the mysticism of the provincial even in the funny and But his return to his homeland also brought some humility contemporary. His province is a fairy tale, sentimental and to his observation, softened his satirical edginess and screaming cynical at the same time, boring and mediocre, and yet colorfulness. Such are his Vitebsk sketches of 1914. In those fantastically bright. He has holidays when dancing grass grows provincial streets, under a somber gray sky, with the heaped-up green in the sky and huts sway upside down, and funerals wooden houses, delicately puffed-up trees, na'i've shop signs, where the sky is covered with a black crepe. and poor thin horses, you no longer hear the anguished scream. His churches, mills, market-fair showbooths, many-colored You sense in them some subdued, humble love. His Barbershop hats are like children's toys; his clumsy little humans at is veiled in calm — one of the best interiors I have seen in weddings and funerals are like marionettes; and even inanimate exhibitions of recent years, and I. A. Morosov did well to buy it objects, lamps and tables, seem in his paintings to be — a provincial barbershop filled with a meek sun, dusty air,

mysteriously alive. Chagall could realize on stage what the and the pitiful smile of cheap wallpaper. . . . contemporary theater needs more than anything — psychological The ennobling of Chagall's colors was especially reflected in decoration, in which mundane life-style would seem real and the sketches of Vitebsk women. Here is a woman in a yellowish inspired from within, like things in Remizov's world, through coat, pale pink skirt, against the background of a gray wall and the prism of the girl Sasha, who is "three years old — three black rags; from this coarse and poor piece of life, Chagall thousand, and perhaps three times three thousand" (Maka). For created a refined "legend " of cool harmony. And here is a Hoffmann was right: only "childish poetic sensibility" can woman ironing with a black ornamented iron, among the introduce us into the true world. But, in Chagall's early work, decorations of the wallpaper and the green-scarlet curtain — a there was an unhealthy childishness — a hypertrophy of "three work of subtle Degas-like beauty. The stamp of a master lies on thousand" years, and a tense worry of the contemporary Jewish many other studies — soldiers with bread, painted with an Pale. As if some bloody, pogrom fears poisoned his childhood, amazing confidence, guitarists substituting for the former and his fantastics often seemed like a feverish delirium of a sick fiddlers, and even on the series of provincial Pierrots and child Columbines. Somebody said that you can recognize a colorist in the gray tone, indeed Chagall's gray-black gamuts testify to

4. Paris exerted a positive influence on Chagall. He remained his coloristic taste. himself, but accjuirecl what he lacked — form. From childhood Chagall remained the same decorator and ornamentalist his on, he had a sensibility for color and linear patterns, but in his race made him. But his work began to liberate itself from the images, there was none of the "plasticity" that brings images flood; his people stopped flying in the rooms. In reality itself, closer to semblances, which religion had forbidden since in the truth of three dimensions, he began to guess the ancient times. In his works, there was no flesh, and his mystical life of colors and lines. The young and homeless decorative mysticism was not sufficiently convincing. He was Ahasverus stood with both feet on the ground — wet, warm, in danger of remaining a "wunderkind" in short pants. His stay fruitful. And though, as before, he is different in every in Paris brought him close to Aryan idolatry without depriving painting, still this nestling to mother earth is a hopeful sign of him of the national-eastern qualities (color and ornament); it Chagall's creative blossoming. made his work more condensed by acquiring a sense for volume. He has to preserve his Hoffmannesque "childish poetic The stone-gray landscape of Paris taught him to feel the sensibility," so rare in our adult, too adult, time, and his borders of objects to a much greater extent than the crooked sharpness and fantastics. But he will finally have to overcome walls of the provincial, colorful houses. his nervousness, his anguish. When the legacy of "three Chagall passed through the school of Cubism, but he did thousand" years stops burdening him, and becomes instead his just that: he passed through it without getting fossilized epical tradition, his wonderful art will become religiously spiritually as did many others; for him, form didn't become a pacified and luminous, and, therefore, also objectively valuable.

Texts and Documents 1 43 The Nevs^ Yiddish Theater The Jewish Theater Society and the Chamber Theater Lei' Levidov This text and the two that follow were included in a programmatic brochure published by thejeu ish Theater Society in Petrograd. in

Yiddish, with the title The Yiddish Chamber Theater: On Its Opening in July 1919.

"Let there be light" — and the Yiddish Chamber Theater

appeared in the white world. . . . Dreams came true, all our wishes were fulfilled.

I remember it was on November 9, 1916, that the Jewish Theater Society was opened. A joyful, festive day. The auditorium was packed, excited faces, solemn speeches, an

enormous elation of the soul. A new society was born and it called aloud: "Come work for a Yiddish, national, painterly

theater!" . . . The congratulations, the speeches, the telegrams

flowed together, as in a chorus. . . .

Isn't it strange, frightening? Jews, who have contributed the best artists, who have given the most splendid flowers to the universal altar of art, don't have their own theater to speak

Yiddish with them? . . . No! Such a theater must be. This is demanded by the honor and dignity of the Jewish people, this

is demanded by our national culture. . . . The new Yiddish Theater Society promised to create such a theater, a theater for

us. They swore to devote all their strength to carry out that assignment. And with excitement, with love, they set to work.

It was a hard time. The old regime lay dying and, as it died,

as always, bloodthirsty and mercilessly, it persecuted the exhausted Jewish people.

A Yiddish theater. . . . What had borne such a name in the Jewish street was not a theater: the Yiddish actors had no right of sojourn, no place to rest; the Yiddish language was persecuted and derided; the surrogate theater that existed was not cultural and was benighted. The whole being of Yiddish

theater was like a stupid, invented tale. . . . Meetings of the new society began — raging, passionate, long. No one knew what they should begin to do. 'What to do

first, how to build the new building? . . . Hadn't all previous

attempts come to nothing? . . . There was no clay, no bricks for

the building. ... At the first meetings, the word was spoken

for the first time: "A Yiddish studio," a Yiddish theater school. And that word was soon accepted, found a warm resonance in all hearts. Yes, we really should have one, we really should begin here. Three long meetings were devoted to the single question of whether to create a school-studio or a studio-

school. . . . How many arguments were poured out, how much

excitement. . . . They discussed programs, they prepared a repertoire, they listed the teachers and actors by name, they

wrote estimates . . . and then . . . the Revolution blazed up, and the light of our work disappeared in the glow of Revolutionary sun. A series of meetings and assemblies began, political arguments took over. The issue of the theater was left by the wayside. In vain did some try to go back to work — no one thought about theater any longer. The convention of Yiddish actors in Moscow did no more than force some to think again about beginning the halted work. That was hard to do. The political sea was too flamboyant, the world order had moved too much for people calmly to be able to begin again to

build the national, cultural life. But it seems that culture is

stronger than the transient phenomena of life. New times came, new songs, new faces. And among the new, also old and

good friends. Why not? . . . Welcome. . . . Let us now begin our work for the community again. The thought has again

appeared that excited us and made us all happy. Out of the

chaos, our idea is born again, the idea of the studio. The studio

is our own child, our only child, the holy dream that was

1 44 Texts and Documents dreamed by the Yiddish Theater Society. And now the dream is Our Goals and Objectives Aleksti Granovskii reahzed. The studio began to live, not only in words, but in

action. And it lives, and works, and gets out into the wide A hundred and fifty days ago, we opened the doors of our world. The Yiddish Chamber Theater is yet a second step from studio and beckoned to those who wanted to work and lend our studio. And the current performances of the Yiddish a hand to build the Yiddish theater. Chamber Theater are the beginning of a new period, of a new A hundred and fifty days — in such a short time, one

life in the Yiddish theater. What kind of spectacles these will normally cannot speak of achievements and realization.

be we shall see later — we shall see what they will give the And if, today, we raise the curtain, we won't and can't say: Jewish people. But, on the other hand, we see here young, See, this is what we have accomplished. No, we just want to capable people, who love with body and soul their theater, say: Look, this is the path we want to take. their language, the idea of our own national theater, and they Do not be concerned about the technical roughness of our work hard, very hard. And that says everything. first performances. We are still young: we have been alive for

The new word has already been said, the new word has been only five months. . . . We invited no professional artists, no invite turned into new action. . . . New Theater, you have our best experienced stage workers; not only did we not them, wishes. The Jewish Theater Society sends you its blessing. we didn't let them in, because more than anything we hate in art the artisan smugness of the "professionals," their artisan Lev Levidov approach to "play" and "performance," their inability to Chairman of the Jewish Theater Society abandon themselves to the joy of creation. On our path we took along no artisans; but we ourselves, obviously, had no time in 150 days to become masters. And

what we show you, raising our theater curtain for the first

time, is just a vague hint of the path we tread.

Yiddish theater. ... It never existed, and the mess that dominated the Yiddish stage was an eternal reminder to build

the Yiddish theater! And our task, our goal, is to create something we never had and always strove for — the Yiddish theater. We do not agree with those who assume that Yiddish

theater has its own special laws, must feed on a specific

repertoire, and must not depart from daily life, or, what is

called in Russian, byt.

We say: Yiddish theater is first of all a theater in general, a temple of shining art and joyous creation — a temple where

the prayer is chanted in the Yiddish language. We say: the tasks of world theater serve us as the tasks of our theater, and only language distinguishes us from others.

How and what will our theater be? What gods will it serve? We cannot answer these questions. We don't know our

gods. . . . We seek them. . . .

Seeking — this is the word we put at the head of our

program. . . . We shall seek roads for the actors, as for the director, the painter, and the playwright.

We shall not stand still for a moment. And, perhaps, in seeking a path, we will have to stray, perhaps we will make gods for ourselves whom we will later topple from their

thrones. . . .

Perhaps. . . . But one thing will serve as our justification — our will to find the right path to the true gods.

I have the great honor to be a leader of the first Yiddish theater. And today, with the serious feeling of the

responsibility I assumed, opening the doors of the theater to

the general audience for the first time, I beg everyone who has come to our little lights to transfer the whole weight of criticism and carping to us, the leaders, and not to touch the

studio workers — because none of them thinks he is ripe enough to appear before your observing and serious eyes, for each of them treats reverently the task he has set himself — to

become an actor of the Yiddish theater. And if, today, they

stand fiice to face with you, it is only because they fulfill the disciplinary requirements of their leaders.

We found it necessary to open our doors so early to the general audience in order to proclaim to everyone, to all

who cherish Jewish art, Jewish culture, Jewish theater; to all who are willing to take pains, seek, struggle and achieve:

" "Come to us! Using the kind proposal of the Yiddish Theater Society to

write a few lines for the opening of the Yiddish theater, I

Texts and Documents 1 45 cannot refrain from expressing my profound gratitude to all The Past and the Future of Yiddish Theater my colleagues in our work, for finding a way to devote Al. R/ves//U!i/ themselves entirely to the work, for their extraordinary

attitude toward the goals and objectives of our studio, for their The sad, almost hopeless situation of Yiddish theater is

ability to forget personal interests in the name and for the sake known to everyone who was ever more or less interested in it. of the common work. We can say that in no area of Jewish art has the Jewish people

been so frozen as in the area of theater art. Before our eyes lies Aleksei Granovskii a desert with no hint of an oasis. In that desert, no Moses ever Artistic Director of the Yiddish Chamber Theater appeared, no Pillar of Fire ever arose to eject even for a moment

the darkness, the chaos of Yiddish theater. And saddest of all is that those who strayed in the gloomy and broad desert, the Yiddish actors, could not say, "We want to return to Egypt to

the fleshpot." . . . No! The Yiddish actor never had a good, satiated day; never has his pharoah, his bitter lot, shown him a ray of happiness.

If we want to find out why it happened, if we want to ascertain the reasons for the harsh, almost fatal, illness, to

investigate the source of this poverty and, let us say it openly, this shameful weakness of Yiddish theater art, we have to admit that the whole responsibility falls on the cultural elements of the Jewish people. Until the 1870s, no one even knew or talked about a Yiddish theater. The Haskala people with their conspicuous tendency to quote the "Holy Tongue," on the one hand, and the assimilationist elements of the Jewish people, on the other, were both hostile to the so-called "jargon," and contemptuously put a black seal on the "mother tongue,"

called it "maidservant." And only such true friends of the Jew as Sh. Abramovich [Mendele Moykher Sforim} had the boldness and courage to write in Yiddish. If the Yiddish language was a maidservant, the Yiddish theater was her brother. Forty years passed and throughout that

long period, the Yiddish language triumphantly showed it was

not a maidservant at all, though it does faithfully and honestly serve the Jewish people. Mendele Moykher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Sholem Asch, Frug, Morris Rosenfeld, Yehoash — such names than can adorn the finest European literature, and they have indeed crowned the "jargon" with an enduring crown studded with the most precious diamonds.

And still the Yiddish stage remained poor, neglected and debased, morally and artistically downtrodden, almost as forty years ago. The Jewish intelligentsia, the Jewish art patrons showed no

sign of attention to Yiddish theater. A sickly weakling, it was born in southern Russia forty years ago, and has remained anemic and weak to this day. The pioneer of Yiddish theater, Avrom Goldfaden, may have been cultural and talented, to a certain extent; but he had absolutely no idea of theater art in the European sense of the word. With no plan, no view toward

the future of Yiddish theater art, he laid the first weak stone for the Yiddish theater building, and the material, the bricks he took for this building were so weak the building was shaky

from the very first day. Its architecture was far from an

aesthetic taste, from what is called art. The first Yiddish actors were ignorant artisans, often people who left their workshops looking for an easier piece of bread, mostly promiscuous young people for whom acting on the stage was the same as a "Purim- shpil." With no literary taste, no sign of intellectual development, they played, sang, and danced, and were happy when the rich contractors in Romania burst out laughing at their "Purim-shpil" barbs. Today a lover, the next day a "Kuni-

Lemel" [shlemiel], tomorrow a witch, the Yiddish actors, as it were, did not feel their shame and "thundered" — as they put

it — in the same manner wherever the police allowed them. The Jewish cultural elements stood at a distance, criticized,

mocked, but did not dip a finger in cold water to remove all ugliness and clumsiness from the Yiddish theater. Chaos

1 46 Texts unci Dociniieiits reigned: you will find no art, no direction on the Yiddish stage. attract the attention of the best Jewish cultural forces.

And if you recall such talented Yiddish actors as, tor example, We believe we are standing on the threshhold of a new Kaminskaya, Edelman, Zhelyazo, Libert, and others, you must Yiddish theatrical age. We believe the revolution that wants admit with deep grief and despair that those talented actors, to destroy the old, sick building of the former Yiddish theater too, were content with the heavy atmosphere prevailing on the will bring its good truits. We believe the activity of the Yiddish stage; that they, too, never protested the contemptuous young Yiddish "Chamber Theater" will be treated not with order, never strove to progress; and tor that very reason, they disparaging criticism, a suspicious smile, a shrug — but with regressed. Their god was Gordin, to him they bowed and knelt empathy, with seriousness of word and deed. We believe those and brought offerings. But those otterings had no sweet smell who will criticize will honestly admit that every beginning is of art either, for the altar, the Yiddish stage, remained dirty, hard, that only he who does nothing makes no mistakes. desecrated by ignorance and trivolity. The situation ot Yiddish theater today is harsh and bitter. Yes, there were moments when rays seemed to appear, But even harsher are the conditions, the hostile atmosphere in which were supposed to illummate the darkness of Yiddish which one has to work, which can be defined as "Plenty of

theater art, the mundane dusk in which it was covered like a critics and few doers." . . . mourner: the immortal Peretz wanted to be Samson and rip So come, writers, experienced professionals, musicians, the chain binding Yiddish theater art. He traveled through painters! Answer our call and courageously help build a cities and towns, screamed "Save us!," rattled an alms box beautiful, strong, and truly Yiddish-European theater inscribed with the terrible words, "Charity saves trom death." building! Don't stand aside, bring bricks and clay — and let

But it didn't help. "Kuni-Lemel" and the Witch Yakhne the language ot the builders not be confounded. Let us screamed louder, the Jewish intelligentsia didn't respond, the understand and empathize with each other. Let us strive to the portly Jewish patron carefully hid his wallet, and the Yiddish sun with the tower we are building, and let us remember that stage remained a dirty, promiscuous maidservant, laughing only in unity, in a united striving and will, lies the tuture of wildly, dancing, making ugly grimaces, here, in Russia, and the new Yiddish theater. overseas — in America. The same lot tell to the poor, sickly, and talented Peretz Hirshbeyn, who tried to start a new page M. Rivesman in the Book of Lamentations of the Yiddish theater. Neglected, Literary Director of the Yiddish Chamber Theater rejected, despairing, tilled with griet and rage, he had to tall like a scorned Don Quixote and buried all his hopes. Swindlers, speculators, dead souls, good-for-nothings, ignoramuses governed the Yiddish stage, and Holy Sabbath gave way to the play To Be a Jew: TheJewish Core irritated along with The So/// of My People and other trash. And only a year ago a mourntul shout was heard: "How

long?" Till when will the immortal "Kuni-Lemel " and the screaming "'Witch Yakhne" dominate? The shout was issued by the newborn Yiddish Theater Society.

Of course, from shouting to doing is a long way. "We must however admit that the shout resonated among a small group of people, and the "dry bones" of the Yiddish theater art called the attention of several social activists. The positive result was that, tor the first time, not a dilettante but a protessional, A. M. Azarkh [Granovskii], became interested in the Yiddish theater. He gave a lecture to the Drama Section, where he developed a plan to create a theater studio, modeled on European theater studios. "With a courageous energy, he strove to realize his plan, and — let there be light — the doors of the Yiddish theater were opened.

The tirst Yiddish theater studio set serious objectives tor

itself. It encountered great difficulties on its path. It experienced grave doubts, moments ot groping and of despair.

But It has come to lite — it demands existence. It wants to produce the kernel trom which a normal Yiddish theater,

Yiddish theater art in a European sense, will develop. It wants

the tuture Yiddish actor to be first of all a true protessional, to

respect the art he wants to serve. It wants the Yiddish stage to become a "Holy Place," the Yiddish actor to teel responsibility for his work; though a son ot his people, he will, at the same time, be a faithful son ot art in the highest and finest sense ot

the word. It wants the most talented Yiddish writers to create for the Yiddish stage, aware that their work will not be protaned, that the Yiddish actor and the Yiddish audience will

respect the place that holds up a mirror to Jewish lite. It wants

to retresh the dirty, moldy Yiddish repertoire and illuminate it with mastertul translations and truly literary, original dramatic

works. In short — it strives, and the striving is, in itselt, a great achievement. The will to create something better and

more serious will be its advocate; the call, the waking must

Texts and Documents 1 47 The Historical Path of the Yiddish Theater In this sense, its role is like Chagall's role in plastic art, in Abram Efros spite of the absolute polarity of artistic temperaments, Chagall Frojn "Before the Opening Curtain: On the Opening of the Season in the ecstatic and Granovskii the intellectual. And so not in vain

the Yiddish Theater" (in Russian). In Tearr i muzyka (Theater and did Chagall enter the stage for the first ti le i i the Yiddish

music). Moscow, no. p (ip22). pp. Iio-il. After leaving the theater for theater, not in vain did he spread his theatrical forms precisely several months. Efros wrote this article a propos the dress rehearsals for from this stage. These forms, like everything else in his art, Granovskii's staging ofGoldfadens The Sorceress. The first part of became kinds of obligatory models essentially influencing the

the article is omitted. formation of characters in The Sorceress of Rabinovich, who created brilliant "variations on Chagallian themes" in his

... I sat in the empty hall at night, not used to being a costumes.

stranger, watching Granovskii knock on the bannister, Looking back, we may say that Chagall is "an artist of three

interrupting the rehearsal and changing the complex pattern of times," as GOSEKT is "a theater of three times." Chagall, too, movement for the hundredth time; the mass body of the has absorbed in his art the traditions of the national past, the troupe, when stopped, scatters immediately, softens, rearranges modernism of today, and the buds of the future. He drew itself on the stage, only to reassemble obediently, fuse, freeze, threads back, in depth, to the past — close to the rooted, and dart ahead — pattering, leaping, and somersaulting — authentic, living faces of old Jewish life — and brought them over the surfaces, roofs, ladders of a fantastic Jewish shtetl, to his paintings with all their living and dead inventory, with invented and populated by the generous talent of [the artist all their long coattails and long beards, canonicity and Isaak] Rabinovich. Sensing in myself a growing joy in this peculiarity, everydayness and fantasy, as GOSEKT brought unfolding "Jewish game," in these sayings, songs, purely them in The Sorceress onto the theatrical boards. But in the

national intonations that suddenly became theatrical, in the language of his paintings, Chagall is so contemporary that he

beautiful subtlety with which Mikhoels serves them up, in the marches in the front row of the European masters of leftist art,

freshness of young Zuskin's talent (an undoubted discovery of while his relation to the future is determined by the stamp he

the theater), I felt clearly one thing which I had never felt has placed on a huge contingent of young artists, including before and which suddenly explained to me why — in spite of many who are now eager to dissociate themselves from him. all our disagreements and distancing, in spite of my skepticism Chagall's so-called "Vitebsk period" was in this sense crucial and negation, the failures, clumsiness, artificiality, unjustified for the work of the young generation of Jewish artists. For the

elements in the performances — I nevertheless am drawn, I first time on the Yiddish stage, Granovskii's Sorceress succeeded would say hypnotically, to the stream of GOSEKT, as to the in finding adequate theatrical solutions for the same age-old riverbed of the imperative, unavoidable, historically unique life in the forms of contemporary leftist art, and, with that path of the Yiddish theater. precision that sets landmarks for the future, for the work to Oh, that Yiddish theater! — Without a foundation or a come. The solutions of The Sorceress have general significance

roof, without borders to its domain or any blueprint! A theater and it seems that The Sorceress is the first step of a "Vitebsk

that is its own grandfather, father, and son. A theater that has period" in the emergence of the Yiddish Chamber Theater as not yet any past, present, or future, and that must create for an important and influential force. itself a past, a present, and a future. A theater that has to live simultaneously in three dimensions of time. A theater with no tradition, but which has to invent for itself a historical line; a theater without a present, but that has to be at the cutting edge of contemporary theater art; a theater without

perspectives, but that has to mold the form of what is to come.

That is why we have no choice here. Here we cannot prefer one

thing to another. Here talk about trends is more negligible

than anywhere else. Here you can either be in the center of the

Jewish "stage" — or be entirely outside it. Coexistence is

impossible here; there is room here for only one thing, and one yardstick: what stands before us? A theater of all dimensions of time? "A theater of three times," creating of its "now" both a forward and a backward? Speaking simultaneously with the triple voice of history, reality, and future? If so, then no matter

what it is in its composition, quality, magnitude, it is the

center, the regulator, the lawgiver; it is history, no matter how

little the tribal philistine recognizes it, no matter what

fashionable or approachable admirers it has gained for itself on

the side, and no matter where it may be drawn by alien pointing fingers.

In its national sphere, the Yiddish Chamber Theater is such a historical center, dominating the situation, directing the

evolution, although alongsicle it there is the very good HaBima

and the very bad Branciesco or Zhitomirskii (I have little

orientation in those pseudonyms, for which I apologize). And though in HaBima, my dear fellow tribalists are so enthusiastic they come down with hiccups, and in Brandesco-Zhitomirskii

they fill the auditorium till they faint, nevertheless, in spite of

it all, both HaBima and Brandesco and many other things around are a mere mirage, fiction, while the Chamber Theater

is a historical reality.

1 48 Texts unci Dnci/ments Our Theater Aleksei Granovskii My Work In the Moscow Yiddish Chamber Theater

Published, in Yiddish, in Literarishe Bleter. Warsaw, vol. $. no. ij Marc Chagall

{April 27. 1928). Published, in Yiddish, in Di Yidishe "Velt: Monthly tor Literature, Criticism, Art, and Culture, Wilna (Kldskin). no. 2 (May 1928). A shorter version of this chapter, translatedfrom a translation, can be In 1919, I was given the task of creating a Yiddish theater found in Chagall's My Life. school; the school was opened the same year in Leningrad, and then numbered thirty-some students. In 1920, the first "Here are the walls," said Efros, "do what you want with graduation and simultaneously the first theater performance them." It was an apartment, run-down, its tenants had fled. took place. Since we felt it necessary, considering our teaching "See, here we will have benches for the audience, and over methods, to produce a unified whole, we doubted if we should there, the stage." accept students from other dramatic schools or actors from To tell you the truth, "over there," I didn't see anything but different theaters. All the human material of our theater came a vestige of a kitchen, and "here"? to us as "raw material," and only alter they had been processed I shouted, "Down with the old theater that smells of garlic in our workshops were they to appear on our stage. For us, the and sweat! Long live ..." And I dashed to the walls. On the foundation of artistic education was that the actor himself ground lay sheets; workers and actors were crawling over them, must be in control of his own emotional apparatus; he then through the renovated halls and corridors, among slivers, trains his own capabilities, his body, and all his feelings to be chisels, paints, sketches. subordinate to his will, his controlling reason, and that precise Torn tatters of the Civil War — ration cards, various rhythm on which we build all our productions. In other words, "queue-numbers" — lay around. I too wallowed on the the basis of artistic education is to train the actor's capability to ground. At moments, I enjoyed lying like this. At home they become a part of the organic whole of the performance. lay the dead on the ground. Often, people lie at their heads and I consider stage art an independent and sovereign domain. cry. I too love, finally, to lie on the ground, to whisper into it Therefore, all elements constituting a finished performance —

my sorrow, my prayer. . . . the man, the script, the music, the sets, and the light — must I recalled my great-grandfather, who painted the synagogue be subordinate to a single, steadfast thought and the completed in Mohilev, and I wept: why didn't he take me a hundred years score of the production. I don't mean that I want to bind the ago at least as an apprentice? Isn't it a pity for him to lie in the actor and deprive him of the possibility of being creative — on Mohilev earth and be an advocate for me [in the World to the contrary, he is given the greatest opportunity to express Come}? Let him tell with what miracles he daubed with his himself But since he is educated in the sharp consciousness of brush in the shtetl Lyozne. Blow into me, my bearded our task and feels that he is a responsible part of a monolithic grandfather, a few drops of Jewish truth! whole, he is capable of subordinating himself to the primary To have a bite, I sent the janitor Ephraim for milk and task and of being creative within its framework. bread. The milk is no milk, the bread is no bread. The milk For us, dramatic literature is also only one element of a has water and starch; the bread has oats and tobacco-colored harmonious whole and does not retain any independent straw. Maybe it is real milk, or maybe — fresh from a meaning. We calculate precisely (or strive to) the rule-governed revolutionary cow. Maybe Ephraim poured water into the jar, mutual relationships of all elements, and subordinate them to the bastard, he mixed something in and served it to me. Maybe the main thought that is our sole task and sole purpose. When somebody's white blood. ... I ate, drank, came to life. I approach the production of a work, my major task is to show Ephraim, the representative of the workers and peasants, the spectator how we perceive and understand this work, the inspired me. If not for him, what would have happened? His whole atmosphere and the whole world in which our heroes nose, his poverty, his stupidity, his lice crawled from him to live. Therefore, it is fully justified, when the author does not me — and back. He stood like this, smiling feverishly. He show his milieu (as for example, in Jules Romain's Tri/adec), didn't know what to observe first, me or the paintings. Both that I create the milieu, that is, I create variations on Romain's of us looked ridiculous. Ephraim, where are you? Who will theme. I do it because I believe that a work for the stage that ever remember me? Maybe you are no more than a janitor, but does not show the "air" in which the acting figures live is sometimes by chance you stood at the box office and checked superfluous and does not exist at all for the theater. the tickets. Often I thought: they should have taken him on For the performances I select all kinds of dramatic means of stage; didn't they take janitor Katz's wife? Her figure looked expression (drama, comedy, operetta) according to what each like a square yard of wet wood covered with snow. Carry the stage moment foregrounds. Practically, we carry out this task wood to the fifth floor and put it in your room. The water in the following manner: when we agree on a specific play, I

streams. . . . She screamed, protested during rehearsals like a propose the script on the basis of which I create, together with pregnant mare. I don't wish on my enemies a glance at her my dramaturgical assistants, the text for the actor. Then I breasts. Scary! make a sketch of the actor's score, and everyone who Right behind the door — Granovskii's office. Before the participates in the staging — the composer, the painter, the theater is done, there is little work. The room is crowded. He technician — gets his precisely drawn task. As for the lies in bed, under the bed wood shavings, he planes his body. rehearsals, the work is conducted in the following manner: first Those days he was sick. of all, the actor has to master the text and the nielodies, he "How is your health, Aleksei Mikhaylovich?" must perceive the main rhythm of the performance; and only So he lies and smiles or scowls or curses. Often acrid words, then is he set in motion. On average, every play is rehearsed of the male or female gender, fell on me or on the first comer. I 150 times, but never more than 250. That depends on how don't know if Granovskii smiles now, but just like Ephraim's complicated the task is and how fast the actors master the milk, his futile smiles console me. True, sometimes, I felt like image and the relations between all the parts. tickling him, but I never dared to ask, "Do you love me?" Such are the principles according to which we work and on I left Russia without it. which the theater has been built for the last ten years; and with For a long time, I had dreamed of work in the theater. Back this theater, we are launching a lengthy worldwide tour. in 1911, Tugendhol'd wrote somewhere that my objects are

alive. I could, he said, paint psychological sets. I thought about Berlin

Texts and Documents 1 49 it. Indeed, in 1914, Tugenhol'd recommended to Tairov, the even get out into the hall that evening for the first director of the Moscow Chamber Theater, that he invite me to performance. I was all smeared with paint. A few minutes paint Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor. We met and before the curtain rose, I ran onto the stage to patch up the parted in peace. The goblet was overflowing. Sitting in color of several costumes, for I couldn't stand the "Realism." Vitebsk — commissaring away, planting art all over the And suddenly a clash: Granovskii hangs up a plain, real towel!

" province, multiplying student-enemies — I was overjoyed to I sigh and scream, "A plain towel?!

get Granovskii's and Efros's invitation in 1918 to work in the "Who is the director here, me or you? " he answers.

newly opened Yiddish theater. Shall I introduce Efros to you? Oh, my poor heart, oh sweet father!

All of him legs. Neither noisy nor quiet, he is alive. Moving I was invited to do the stage for The Dyhbiik in HaBima. I

from right to left, up and down, always beaming with his didn't know what to do. Those two theaters were at war with

eyeglasses and his beard, he is here and he is there, Efros is each other. But I couldn't not go to HaBima, where the actors everywhere. We are bosom buddies and we see each other once didn't act but prayed and, poor souls, still idolized

every five years. I heard about Granovskii for the first time in Stanislavskii's theater.

Petrograd during the war. From time to time, as a pupil of If between me and Granovskii — as he himself put it — Reinhardt, he produced spectacles with mass scenes. After the love affair didn't work out, Vakhtangov (who had then

Reinhardt's visit to Russia with Oedipi/s Rex, those mass scenes directed only The Cricket on the Hearth) was a stranger to me. It

created a certain impression. At the same time, Granovskii will be very hard, I thought, to find a common language

produced spectacles using Jews of all kinds of professions between the two of us. To an open declaration of love, I

whom he assembled from, everywhere. They were the ones who respond with love; but from hesitations and doubts, I walk later created the studio of the Yiddish theater. away.

Once I saw those plays, performed in Stanislavskii's realistic For example, in 1922, they invited me lovingly to

style. As I came to Moscow, I was agitated. I felt that, at least Stanislavskii's second art theater to stage together with the

in the beginning, the love affair between me and Granovskii director Diky Synge's Playboy of the Western World. . . .

would not settle down so fast. I am a person who doubts I plunged into it body and soul, but the whole troupe

everything under the sun, whereas Granovskii is sure of declared a strike, "Incomprehensible."

himself, and a bit ironic. But the main thing is that, so far, he Then they invited somebody else and the play was a flop.

is absolutely no Chagall. Isn't it true?

They suggested I do the wall paintings and the first At the first rehearsal of The Dybbnk in HaBima, watching

production for the opening of the theater. Wow, I thought, the troupe with Vakhtangov, I thought, "He is a Russian, a

here is an opportunity to turn the old Yiddish theater upside Georgian; we see each other for the first time. Embarrassed, we down — the Realism, Naturalism, Psychologism, and the observe one another. Perhaps he sees in my eyes the chaos and

pasted-on beards. I set to work. I hoped that at least a tew of confusion of the Orient. A hasty people, its art is

the actors of the Yiddish Chamber Theater and of HaBima, incomprehensible, strange. . . . Why do 1 get upset, blush, and

where I was invited to do The Dybb/ik, would absorb the new pierce him with my eyes?"

art and would abandon the old ways. I made a sketch. On one I will pour into him a drop of poison; later he will recall it

wall, I intended to give a general direction introducing the with me or behind my back. Others will come after me, who audience to the new Yiddish People's Theater. The other walls will repeat my words and sighs in a more accessible, smoother and the ceiling represented klezmers, a wedding jester, women and clearer way.

dancers, a Torah scribe, and a couple of lovers hovering over the At the end, I ask Vakhtangov how he intends to conceive

scene, not far from various foods, bagels and fruit, set tables, all of The Dybbiik. He answers slowly that the only correct line is painted on friezes. Facing them — the stage with the actors. Stanislavskii's.

The work was hard; my contact with the work was settling "I don't know," said I, "of such a direction for the reborn down. Granovskii apparently lived slowly through a process of Yiddish theater. " Our ways part. transformation from Reinhardt and Stanislavskii to something And to Zemakh, "Even without me, you will stage my way.

else. In my presence, Granovskii seemed to hover in other There is no other way." I went out into into the street.

worlds. Sometimes, it seemed to me that 1 was disturbing him. Back home in the children's colony in Malakhovka, I

Was it true? I don't know why he did not confide in me. And 1 remembered my last meeting with An-ski,' at a soiree in 1915 at myself didn't dare to open serious discussions with him. The "Kalashnikov's Stock Market." He shook his gray head, kissed wall was breached by the actor Mikhoels, who was starving just me, and said, "I have a play. The Dybbiik, and you're the only like me. He would often come to me with bulging eyes and one who can carry it out. I thought of you." forehead, hair standing on end, a pug nose and thick lips — Ba'al-Makhshoves, who stood nearby, blazeci agreement entirely majestic. with his eyeglasses and nodded his head.

He follows my thought, he warns me, and with the sharp "So what shall I do? . . . What shall I do?"

edges of his hands and body he tries to grasp. It is hard to Anyway, I was told that a year later Vakhtangov sat for

forget him. He watched my work, he begged to let him take many hours at my projects, when he prepared The Dybbiik. And the sketches home, he wanted to get into them, to get used to they invited someone else, as Zemakh told me, to make

them, to understand. Some time later, Mikhoels joyfully projects a la Chagall. And at Granovskii's, I hear, they over-

announced to me, "You know, I studied your sketches, I Chagalled twentyfold.

understood. I changed my role entirely. Everybody looks at me Thank God for that. and cannot understand what happened."

I smiled. He smiled. Other actors quietly and carefully Malakhovka 1921 — Paris 1928 snuck up to me, to my canvases, began observing, finding out

what kind of thing this is. Couldn't they also change? There P .S. I just heard that the Muscovites are abroad. Regards to was little material for costumes and decorations. The last day them! before the opening of the theater, they collected heaps of truly

old, worn-out clothes for me. In the pockets, I found cigarette 1. An-ski (S. Rapoporc, 1863-1920), scholar, folklorist, and writer, was author

butts, dry bread crumbs. I painted the costumes fast. I couldn't of the play The Dybbuk.

1 50 Taxti unci Docinuaiti My First Meeting v/ith Solomon Mikhoels I really didn't have much luck with directors. Not with Aiair Chagall Vakhtangov, who at first empathized neither with my art nor Published, in Yiddish, in Yidishe Kulrur: Monthly ot the Jewish with my sketches for The Dybbuk in HaBima, and yet later

World Culture Union, New York. vol. 6. no. liJanuary 1944). asked to make it a la Chagall without me; nor with Tairov, who was still sick with Constructivism; nor with the Second Studio My destiny brought me here to America; and, suddenly, after of the Moscow Art Theater, which was still drowning in so many years, I see here my old friend Shloyme Mikhoels. He psychological realism. . . . All of them, as well as others, asked arrived with my new friend, the poet Itsik Fefer, bringing me to make sketches, and later got scared of them. regards from our homeland. And here was Granovskii. Truly a seeker. He spoke only Since you have asked me to write something about Russian in the Yiddish theater. He really did have talent,

Mikhoels, who is now celebrating his twenty-fifth year m the perhaps eclectic yet gracious; but he was straying on the paths

Yiddish theater, I remember with pleasure my first meeting of his German teacher Max Reinhardt with his theories of mass with him. scenes, which were then in fashion. Granovskii searched

Those years when I first started working in the Yiddish gradually, not so much with the fervor of a Jewish soul, but as theater rise up in my memory. if through books. He wanted to liberate himself from the

In my dreams ... I transpose myself to my city. Thin young decorative German path, and kept looking for new Jewish trees, bent, sighing as on a day of Tashlikh. forms, which began appearing here and there in the Jewish

In my youth, I walked like this through streets plastic world.

searching. . . . For what? It fell to me to be the first painter in the new Yiddish Among my holidays, once upon a time, there was one great theater, but Granovskii didn't talk to me and got away with one: Sholem Aleichem came to read his writings in my city. I just a smile; I with my "character" was also silent. had no money for a ticket, but anyway I was angry at the small The rehearsals of Sholem Aleichem pieces, which were to town guys who read Sholem Aleichem and laughed all the time open the new theater, were conducted on one side, and I was just for the sake of laughing. I, on the contrary, didn't laugh so steeped in my work on the other side. much and thought that Sholem Aleichem was a "Modernist" in But I harbored a very special hope for the magical art. Someday, I would show them. Mikhoels. He didn't get underfoot like the others, walking Some twelve years later (around 1919), a Yiddish theater back and forth in the long corridors of the small theater, which studio from Petrograd, with an unknown director, arrived in had just been rebuilt for a private home (later it moved to a our city. The director surely came to our city because his wife bigger house). Everywhere pieces of wood, old newspapers, was from Vitebsk. The "studio" was a conglomeration of young boards, sticks, and other rags were lying around. One actor and old amateurs. After the performance, I walked around carried a ration of black bread and another carried a bottle of glumly in the lobby of the city theater accompanied by my old bluish milk mixed with water into his room. And I sat on the teacher, the artist Yehuda Pen, who teased me with his ladder, painting the murals. The janitor Ephraim, a young wild misnaged smile — you don't know why or wherefore. . . . animal, would bring me my ration of bread and milk and

Finally I ran into the director himself. meanwhile laugh his fill over my paintings. So I would sit like

Aleksei Granovskii — tall, supple, blond. He looked a bit this on the ladder, painting the wall. I wanted to paint myself like a Christian. He would rarely open his mouth — maybe into it, you, my own cities and towns. My Bella would come to because of his bad teeth. He could speak with his mouth shut. "console" me with the little angel — Idochka — hardly two His eyes smiled from an accidental, unknown pleasure that feet high. She would wander around below and look at Papa would alight on him like a fly. And he would look both at you above — it's too high for her. Meanwhile, Mama would go

and at somebody else on the side. . . . learn Yiddish performance from her teacher Mikhoels. From

" "I really need you, Chagall!" he says suddenly. "You know, I afar I would hear her voice, "Bells are ringing. . . . {From a ..." have a play . . . just for you. poem by Peretz Markish.] And I would sit and think about the

For quite a while, I had thought it was time for me to get new art in the new theater, with no pasted-on beards scaring into Yiddish theater. Something had to "burst," to open up in me like ghosts. I would think about those Purim-players, me. But why wasn't I drawn to Granovskii as to somebody about that beggar with the green face and the sack on his back else? To whom? What for? Meanwhile, my friend Efros called where he hides a Siddur, a herring, a piece of bread, and now I me from Moscow to come paint the walls of the new Yiddish would see him at night, in the moonlight with his beard theater and design the sets for the first production of the swinging like a tree in the city park. I wanted to paint him and theater to be founded there. take him to the stage. . . .

" I came to Moscow and found the producer and director When I let myself "think like that, I was liable to lose my Granovskii in bed. He was coquettishly playing sick and balance and fall from the ladder on top of my Idochka below. indulging himself in bed. He conducted conversations from his Silently I begged my distant dead relative — who, once upon a bed. I showed him the finished sketches I had brought from time painted, to his good fortune, the walls of a synagogue —

Vitebsk. As we talked, Mikhoels entered the room. Delicately, to help me. I felt that, nearby, a young Jew was sitting and carefully. He said something very respectfully, listened walking around — he could help me if he wanted to approach attentively, and exited confidently, as the future theater soldier me first, open his mouth — perhaps he himself would become

and general. a different person. . . . Granovskii would make short, smiling remarks, which That was young Mikhoels — strong though short, thin but would be snatched up by the actors all around like a treasure sturdy, practical and dreamy; his logic merged with feeling, his and later lapped up in the long corridors. Yiddish language sounded as if it came from Yiddish books. "You hear? — Granovskii said — You hear.'' — Granovskii He could help, he would pull himself out and pull other actors, laughs! Hush — Granovskii sleeps! A man sits in his room! He even the director himself along.

declares his love." . . . Right at my first meeting with Mikhoels, I was amazed by

But my "affair " with him — he said — somehow doesn't that rare though still vague artistic striving and force, which

hold together . . . ! one day will stumble onto logic and form, which — if you fiind Why? them — take on various sounds, rhythms, and colors, although

Texts and Documents 151 it all may look both illogical and unreal. Those are forms that to life, and show the world its soul. But if, however, the theater

break old artistic conventions and promise something kept itself distant, it would remain "local," with its accidental

important m life. . . . actors' talents. I don't mean the accidental, "decorative" help

I sat on the ladder in the auditorium for a long time of the invited artists. This is often a triviality. surrounded by my murals and sketches for the Sholem It's not enough to speak about the history of Yiddish Aleichem pieces. theater from the point of view of worn-out literary

I locked the doors. Only rarely did Granovskii himself come psychological plays for reading and roles confined to their in to discuss art and theater, and the forthcoming production. time. Of course we had this and still do have a dozen fine and

Once Mikhoels approached me with his mincing steps and said great Yiddish actors — born talents. Fortunately, I have seen in measured, clearly-veiled words, "Mark Zakharovich, lend me some of them at different times. Just as the history of art has

your sketches. I want to study them. We cannot continue like had several fine greater and lesser artists. Yet those who this — you here and we there, everyone separate!" perceived and merged with the whole period in art have had a

But indeed, I could sit like this for a long time, do my deeper significance. Just as, recently, the French trends in work, gather up my bundles and disappear. plastic art; and as, among us Jews, the classics of the new

Mikhoels 's open and friendly approach was symbolic of a Yiddish literature which created style — so is the new Yiddish new type of Jewish man and artist at the beginning of the great actor in the theater. In the same way, Mikhoels strove to create Revolution. a new Yiddish actor in the new Yiddish theater and a new

Therefore, I cannot forget how, a few months later, I theater style. And when you discover inside yourself the heard Mikhoels's long call from his distant room in the important meaning of the technical material, you also see the

corridor, "Chagall, I un—der—stood! . . . Where are you? whole human being inside you. I understood. ..." Thus Mikhoels opened the wide road on which he can And he came up to my ladder holding the sketches. deepen and broaden his theater art with his own power.

"See, Chagall!" With joy in his eyes, covered with a smile Mikhoels is one of the rare happy people who arrived on such a

reaching to his feet, he stood and moved with Sholem road of art, understood it, and discovered himself

Aleichem's text beaming from his mouth. There was no doubt: Later I saw other actors of the Moscow Yiddish Theater, Mikhoels had found something, found the true nuance and especially Zuskin, with a melody on his thick lips, walk the

rhythm — that is, the form, the content, the new spirit, the same road.

new actor. It was a new world. Later I saw the director Vakhtangov sitting in the

I was happy and continued my work, which had to be auditorium before my murals and, like one set ablaze, leading finished, for soon the theater was to be opened. Jokingly, the troupe of HaBima with Rowina and others in The Dybbuk Granovskii said they would take me off the ladder and call on the same road, though earlier he had been opposed.

two doctors to pacify me when they hung my big canvases on Studying art in such a way, Mikhoels grasped life. And,

the walls. just as on the theater stage, so on the stage of life, he

I was waiting — what would happen? The rehearsals of transferred an understanding and analysis of the problems of

Sholem Aleichem's pieces continued in the old style. The our life in that tragic and great time. For our time, too, is our

familiar psychological realism. I imagined that Mikhoels alone material, we work and breathe with it in our art.

would stand out f-rom the whole troupe, and the other actors This shows the absurdity of the opinion that there is a

along with Granovskii would be puzzled: what happened? they "pure" art, art for art's sake. On the contrary, art that is

would ask themselves. How did Mikhoels suddenly break loose ostensibly called "pure" is very often dirty.

from the chain while we can't adapt to it? Once, I was sitting And if Mikhoels, as he said, once learned from me, perhaps

on my ladder, listening. I heard feet tramping on the other side I must now learn from him.

of the wall. . . . Hands opened my door and all the actors Then I myself wouldn't have been drowned in my doubt as suddenly entered the auditorium and said in chorus, "Chagall, in a pot of paint that paints the Jewish face and soul in a hue of Mikhoels has sent us to you. He has changed his role entirely. mystery and sadness.

We asked him, 'What is this?' He says, 'I don't know, go to Chagall, he will explain.' So we came to you, tell us how and

what to do, to be like Mikhoels." . . .

I listened to them and grew sad. I jokingly wanted to sick my painted animals on the walls on them; let the klezmers

"scare" them with a sudden playing and let them go back. I

was "ashamed" of myself — look, I had been hanging before their eyes for a long time; but when Mikhoels changed his art, they came to me. Isn't there a director?

I answered, "Mikhoels himself can explain a lot to you,

much better than I can."

What kind of art is it — Mikhoels's art?

It is almost the same question that could have been asked in the past about the objectives and dreams of the new Jewish

plastic art. Goldfaden, Peretz, Sholem Aleichem, and others are for the

actor what "nature" is for the artist.

For the artist does not copy nature, but creates it facing it. Thus, both the artist and the actor create a new kind of nature. And only this means to have "respect" for the playwright as for nature. Otherwise, the artist creates mere photography, copy

illustration, and not art. And if, at a certain moment, the

theater merged its soul with Jewish plastic art, it would come

1 52 Texts and Doc/tti/crits Mikhoels and Chagall Yosef Schein The Artists of Granovskii's Theater Ahram Efros

Published ni \. SlIjchi. Around the Moscow Yiddish Theater (in Exarpttd Jroiii an i^ssay ongDhdl) piiblishuL in R//ssian, by French). Paris: Lcs Editions Polyglottes. 1964. Iskusstvo, Moscow, vol. 4 {1928}.

I. The years of war and the years of revolution occurred at Mikhoels's success in the role of Menakhem-Mendel Yakenhoz a period of crisis for the Russian theater. Its development in was greatly clue to the painter Marc Chagall. Mikhoels used those fifteen years was not organic, but indeed, at times, to tell of this collaboration with a wise, good-natured smile, paradoxical; secondary elements played a greater role in it than "On the day ot the premiere, Chagall walked into my dressing basic ones. Its history is one of scenic accessories rather than of room. After preparing his colors, he set to work. He divided my theatrical art, a history of the external formation of the stage; face into two parts. One he painted green, the other yellow (as in many ways, it is just a history of stage designers. they say, 'green and yellow' [pale, downcast]). Chagall lifted my This is not contradicted at all by the fact that the Russian right eyebrow two centimeters higher than the left. The wrin- theater has now achieved a world name. In some European kles around my nose and lips spread all over my face. These centers, it has even had a transforming influence. But should wrinkle lines highlighted Menakhem-Mendel's tragic lot. we console ourselves with the fact that the situation there was "I looked in the mirror and was convinced that the makeup even worse? Western criticism, having recovered from the created the dynamism and expressivity of the character. The earlier excitement, now claims in revenge that we were only an artist continued working diligently. Suddenly his fingers exotic episode. As proof, they add that we were succeeded by a remained hanging over mv face with a question mark. fashion for Negroes. This would have sounded devastating had Something bothered him. He put a finger to my eye, took it we pronounced the word "Negroes" with the same accent. But back, and taking several steps back, observed me and added you don't have to live through the Russian Revolution to give regretfully, 'Oh, Solomon, Solomon, if you didn't have your

" such words their true significance. For that, it is enough to be a right eye, I could have clone so much.' hero of His Highness Vulgarity. We, however, are prepared to Mikhoels laughed but soon became pensive and serious. say this: Russian and Negro art were a fresh wind for the West. "My living eye, my Mikhoels eye, hindered Chagall from This does not change anything in the internal processes of bringing Menakhem-Mendel's eye, which he saw and sensed so

" our theater. I could have described the striking aspect of their vividly. The reason apparently was in me. appearance as the blush of the crisis. In the beginning, Russian theater was in a fever of decorationism, the role of the artist

made disproportionately large. I am not afraid to assert (as my professional memory reminds me) that the premieres of 1912— 17 were impressive mostly for the triumphs of their design rather than their actors. Later, after the October upheaval, came the era of Futurism. This happened not because Russian Futurism was belated, as the innovations of Western culture were usually late penetrating Russia. This time, Europe was hasty and we were very complacent. But in 1917, due to one of the most brilliant paracioxes of the Revolution, the Futurists became the power in art. They were part of the new

government, delegated to the domain of art. Incidentally, there

was no equality in the use of time. The Futurists did not fill their five years. The rage of their abstractions, shifts, and breaks evoked a reaction as early as 1920, which soon assumed the character of a violent outburst of simplification. The theater was, in Tolstoi's words, attracted to "gruel." Even the

nihilism about decorations now saw its hour of triumph, only appeared on the stage under another name — common in

theatrical practice! Such is the "Constructivism" of Meierkhol'd and his group: The stage was shamelessly bare, with only cranes, ropes, traps, hatchways, back walls, workers.

It was pretty cynical, and enough to become fashionable and

infect the theaters with pandemonium. Though it was soon

over, Russian theater emerged exhausted: its decorations are

now withered and melancholy. There is an artist on stage, but

in essence there isn't. He is hardly active and almost invisible.

In the best case he imitates himself. He is a veteran member of the staff and not a leader of the theater as he was in that decade between 1910 and 1920. The artist has reverted to the status of non-entity, while the actor, the ensemble, the acting, again

stand on the first plane. I would be willing to consider this a

sign of healthy growth were I not afraid that today's indifference to the artist would deteriorate to apathy. The artist, however, has his place in the scenic system of

elements. It is not dominant, but it is not third-rate, and so

our stage is still unbalanced. We now have much experience,

but little tact. And in art, it seems that there is no greater sin. We have not recovered a sense of measure. The Russian stage of

the period 1925-30 is still sick with disharmony.

Texts ami Documents 153 II. Granovskii began building his theater in the heat of the Tamar by Sholem Asch retailored the Bible for the nth time.

Revolution. This is natural, for there is no time more favorable The Blind by Maeterlinck came late by an immense decade. If for both creators and adventurers. The year 1919 was terrible. that were to become the predominant direction, Granovskii's The period of Military Communism was at the zenith of crisis. theater would merely have produced a more complicated Lenin's strategic genius was already looking for a detour. The variant of HaBima. But in fact, the change of formal elements

Revolution exploded all possiblites. Russian culture swelled was significant, and it became the foundation of Granovskii's and burst in geysers of projects and schemes. In the theater, further work. Jewish folk speech supplanted the bookish Meierkhol'd proclaimed his "October." Vakhtangov led the Hebraism; German theatrical methods deformed the Russian

Third Studio onto twisting rails. Granovskii founded the stage tradition. Yiddish theater. This, however, did not resolve the problem, did not yet To do so he couldn't simply put up minus signs and work create a Jewish theater. The essence was not here. These were with the method of negation, as did Meierkhol'd. Nor was only separate levers. An Archimedean point was needed.

Vakhtangov 's complex strategem available to him. Either solution presupposed the existence of a highly developed III. Granovskii selected his first designer in a manner typical of

theatrical culture which had already exhausted its straight other Russian theaters at the time, not forseeing the role the paths. Granovskii had to build on an empty space. He was his artist would later play in realizing his projects. Furthermore, own ancestor. There was nothing behind his back. From time he apparently did not notice what was happening with artists to time, itinerant theatrical groups of Jewish ne'er-do-wells, on the Russian stage, where the exacerbated dialectics of their unfit for any other profession, had crisscrossed the Pale of interrelationships took a tragic turn. In the decorational Settlement. And in the 1910s, a sad shtetl symbolist, the Vilna systems, entire historical layers were being shaken out in the Maeterlinckoid Peretz Hirshbeyn, had pulled before the open; yet Granovskii remained unconcerned. The Prologue was puzzled Jewish petite bourgeoisie his infinite nose, his meager concocted with homemade means, which seemed simple as possessions, and his loving, naive, and unwitting parodies of long as, for the protagonists — Harlequin, Pierrot and the dramaturgy of European modernism. Colombine — there were uniforms granted them once and for True, along with Granovskii there was HaBima, which all; and accordingly, the curtain was of course made like a radiated well-being. All the good fairies of aid and publicity chessboard — white and black squares. For Amnon and Tamar,

surrounded it. It was supported by an amazing amalgam of he invited the assistant of a famous master, and for The Blind, Zionists, the Rabbinate, parts of the Communist Party, and simply the daughter of a famous father. Granovskii warmed his those liberal anti-Semites who considered the language of the hands in the slanted rays of someone else's fame. When he Bible the only thing bearable about the Jews. One of the first decided finally to approach great people, he unexpectedly

proofs of Granovskii 's real talent was that he circumvented selected Dobuzhinskii. HaBima, recognizing with some higher sense the parasitism of 'What charms did he find in this master? Did he himself

that phenomenon. HaBima lived with an alien mind, claiming find him, or was he given him? I don't know; I think it was by

for itself the wages of others. It cloaked the devices of Russian accident. I don't believe Granovskii when he says that directors and the conventions of the Russian stage in a cover of Dobuzhinskii understood him, because Granovskii didn't

the modernized ancient Hebrew speech. It was Stanislavskii's understand himself; more precisely, neither of them knew what

bastard child by an accidental Jewish mother. I remember one Granovskii needed. It's not worth seeking lofty motives; in skit staged by HaBima in which one character addressed retrospect, all the reasons for historical events look very

another character with the words, " Adon'i ha-sttidmt" — important; Stendhal and Tolstoi unmasked the writing of

"Mr. Student!" Then and there, at the premiere, I thought that history. Be that as it may, Dobuzhinskii was accepted, and the whole nature of an obedient little theater was reflected in Granovskii was happy. But that meant handing over a matter

this Esperanto. Not in vain did it fear Jewish artists, who were requiring young inventiveness and fresh devices to a brittle young and entailed risk. HaBima instead preferred either to second generation of "The World of Art." Thus, naively, on the have a nameless nobody or to invite the experienced way to his room, Granovskii stumbled into another. He conventionality of Eastern decorations by Yakulov and even regressed to the decorational experiments of the 1910s. Miganajan. Only when the pleiade of Jewish artists, roaring Of that pleiade, Dobuzhinskii was not the most interesting; and shimmering, went through Granovskii's stage, did and, besides, his best days were far behind him. In 1919, when

HaBima stretch out its hand to them. Had I written memoirs, Granovskii suddenly offered him the chance to speak Yiddish,

I could have told about my meeting with Zemakh, who tried he was already in deep obscurity. He didn't know what to do to persuade me to influence Chagall, Al'tman, and Rabinovich with himself as his contemporaries didn't know what task to

to work for HaBima. It became dangerous to ignore them and give him. He still wore the popularity he had once achieved they themselves did not show any desire to offer themselves. through the productions of the Moscow Art Theater, but he Incidentally, even for that step, an instruction from the side was exhausted and couldn't always repeat himself faithfully. was necessary, which appeared in the person and authority of He only tried to preserve his cliches, but with worried jealousy, Vakhtangov, who came to HaBima to stage The Dyhb//k. as one guards a hard-earned, yet insufficiently large property. Granovskii did not find his course from the start. Like a Here his nature as a follower, not a leader, was evident. The thoroughbred puppy beginning to walk, he at first stumbled elders of "The World of Art," who raised and influenced him

comically in various corners. Now it is funny to read his were different — they lasted longer and risked more. pathetic declarations of 1919. The brochure proclaiming them Dobuzhinskii brought to Granovskii's stage his old- has long since become a bibliographical rarity. For Granovskii, fashioned aestheticism, his love for the beauty of costumes, a

it is no longer dangerous. It contains many nouns written with subdued nostalgia for things and architectural forms, and the capital letters and even more exclamation marks. In essence, worn-out cliches of emblems and accessories — from the logo

the most important thing in it is the will to exist; the least of the theater, with its stylized Hebrew letters and black-and-

significant are its theatrical dogmas. This was confirmed by the white contrasts of surfaces, to the stylized interiors and human early productions, in which Granovskii stood shakily on his figures used for Asch's Winter. His sketches have been legs and often groped in a vacuum. The Prologue [by preserved; you can see them at Granovskii's even now. But Mikhoels] worked with harlequins and colombines. Amnon and Dobuzhinskii didn't make any special effort, and the

1 54 Texti and Documents handwriting of an artist betrays him as much as does the classes. Granovskii was one of the few who not only dared but handwriting of a writer. Dobuzhinskii didn't take pains; his could perform the upheaval. This "Jewyness," which the anti- hand was guided by condescension. From this work, he Semitism of the pogroms mocked and tormented, which the expected "neither loud fame, nor persecutions" [Pushkin}. It Russified Jewish intelligentsia hushed up in confusion, which was with only slight interest in Granovskii's project that he the Europeanizing progressives of university chairs haughtily just as slightly helped his "young friend." suggested eliminating, which offended the ear, and stung the

I met him casually in the auditorium of the Yiddish eye — in a word (here at last is a fitting case for a theological Theater in Moscow, already at the time of Granovskii's brilliant quotation!), "The stone that the builders refused is become the success. I think they were performing The Sorceress. He was headstone of the corner." agitated, distributed compliments, and occasionally, as if People should have howled with indignation. They didn't unwittingly, dropped phrases about how good it was to work dare because, in the yard and at home, the Revolution on such young stages. He was clearly waiting for an invitation. performed. Visiting Granovskii, to the sacramental formula of Obviously, he assumed that he, the godfather of the theater, petit bourgeois opposition of "What a country, what a could expect this as a matter of course. "We made believe we government!" They added, "What licentiousness!" Afterward, didn't understand. All roads to artists of his type were taboo. they went to HaBima to view an aristocratic Jew, with biblical He departed, tense, officious, and angry. He didn't understand speech, pathetic gestures, and exotic costumes. Incidentally, a thing about what took place in those years. some higher echelons of the Revolution preferred the same comeliness. Negatively, this was expressed in the fact that the

IV. The theater moved to Moscow in the spring of 1920, people didn't go to Granovskii; positively, at the premieres of which became the date of its second birth. The real history of HaBima, you could see the Moscow Chief Rabbi Mazeh next to the Yiddish theater begins here. Feverish, raging, roiling Politburo member Kamenev, nodding to each other in Moscow, headquarters of the revolutionary state, potential satisfaction. capital of the world, shaken daily, hourly, by the thrusts and explosions of events, the turns of the wheel, the breakdowns V. Granovskii really unfurled the "Yid" on the stage. He threw of the machinery, engulfed with typhus, covered with his audience the forms, rhythms, sounds, colors of the rumors, starving on rations, heating its ovens with fences and phenomenon which bore this nickname. Had it only been by furniture — but constantly seething with a triumphant, imitation of shtetl daily life, by a naturalistic counterfeit of the historical effort of will, crystalizing the dim movements of the countenance and life of the everyday Jew, even with a light masses; emitting — "To everyone! Everyone! Everyone!" — admixture of a Jewish anecdote, that traditional consolation of protests, appeals, orders, slogans; thundering with the both the friendly and hostile citizen — so be it! Ultimately, it triumphant copper of hundreds of orchestras; in the weekdays would have been acceptable to everyone, and you could have of its new calendar, pouring the scarlet of its red banners over pitied them, "Poor people. . . . How good it is that history, dense crowds marching through the streets; turning into nevertheless, moves! " But Granovskii demanded something reality the creative chimerae of dozens of directors, hundreds of entirely different of the auditorium. He wanted the filth he artists, thousands of actors, bare-legged dancers, circus unfolded to be accepted as an immense, self-sufficient value. performers, dilettantes and adventurers; generously giving Granovskii deepened its theatrical and artistic features to the them money (though devalued), buildings (though falling level of an all-encompassing imperative, a universal apart), materials (though disintegrating) — Soviet Moscow generalization. From dross he made gold. On an evening of ignited in Granovskii a decisive spark. He became himself He self-parody at the theater, the young actor Zuskin masterfully found the Archimedean point of the Yiddish theater. portrayed "a series of magical transformations" of a dignified

I am slightly afraid of the term I would use to characterize Jew who found himself at Granovskii's and, at first, couldn't it, a term brown with the clotted mud of centuries, which you believe his ears, then turned scarlet, and finally dashed out of won't find in any other language but Russian. But it expresses the auditorium screaming, "Ay, ay — what an anti-Semite!" what I need and I shall utter it. This word is — "Jewness" As a matter of fact, the long hems of the capotas and fringed

{_Zhidovstvo]. I am prepared to explain: is it a metaphor? Yes undergarments, the curls of beards and hair, the curves of noses and no. The Russian Revolution accustomed us to posing a and backs hovered over the space of the stage in Granovskii's question about the social meaning of every artistic theater, if one can say so, as absolutes. The singsong, gutteral phenomenon. The Revolution has the right to demand it, for speech, squeaking at the ends of sentences, entered the ear like under the conditions of a social cataclysm, there are no neutral a molded, finished, self-sufficient system. The scattered, forces; art becomes the same accomplice or enemy as anything hurried movements and gestures, interrupting each other, ran else. My term means that Granovskii's theater, like a screen like a counterpoint of beads. Granovskii turned the features of blown up by light, reflected the appearance of the awakened small daily life into a theatrical device and a stage form. From and agitated masses of the Jewish people on the stage of this moment, the Yiddish theater came into being. revolution. The upturned daily life of shtetls and cities, with But the key to the problem was not with the director but all their people and smells, flooded onto the stage. This was with the artists. Granovskii had to borrow. He didn't hesitate both the strength and the weakness of the theater. The old for he never suffered from stupidity. He caught the artist by world was broken down, and Granovskii showed it with an the lapels and didn't let go of him until he attained his immense expressiveness; but the new had not yet been found, objective. The artist gave him the basic formulas for the and Granovskii didn't know how to anticipate it and present it images he sought, the first devices for their embodiment, and prematurely. His theater was passive. This is not a reproach. the initial stages of their development. And it was this that

Show me if it was different anywhere else! All other theaters formed the contrast between the role of a designer on the of Soviet Russia were like this. general Russian stage and his later significance for the Yiddish

But my word loses its metaphorical arbitrariness in the stage. In the 1920s, when the masters of theater painting were artistic-theatrical sense. Here it is literal. Granovskii only allowed into the auditorium condescendingly, as accomplished an immense and positive revolution. Political traditional guests at the premiere — and were, as much as radicalism is often combined with aesthetic reaction. The possible, prevented from working on the stage as executors of power of taste is protected more securely than the power of the decorations — it was precisely then that the Jewish artist

Texts atid Documents 155 played a primary role in creating his national theater. This interrogation from inside as from the guard of a gunpowder

assertion will not surprise anyone; I mention the well-known cellar; in addition, at fixed hours, he was served food through a phenomenon only in passing. crack in the half-open door. This was not simple intoxication Among the components that went into the construction of with work; he was truly possessed. Joyfully and boundlessly, he the Yiddish theater, painting was the most mature in its bled paintings, images, and forms. Immediately he felt

development and the most specific in its manifestations. It did crowded on the few meters of our stage. He announced that,

not get entangled in elementary searches for its own artistic along with the decorations, he would paint "a Jewish panel" on form the way that the tongue of Yiddish writers tripped over the big wall of the auditorium; then he moved over to the

itself and formulated more jargon than Yiddish. Neither did it small wall, then to the spaces between the windows, and finally have such quantities of raw ethnographic slang as did the to the ceiling. The whole hall was Chagallized. The audience works of Jewish composers, who were satisfied with copying came as much to be perplexed by this amazing cycle of Jewish folksongs and melodies that they peppered only lightly with frescoes as to see Sholem Aleichem's skits. They were truly

modernism. Painting and graphics gave Granovskii a ready- shaken. I often had to appear prior to the performance with

made solution for conquering the auditorium. The entire some introductory remarks, explaining what kind of thing it

group of Jewish painters worked dynamically and was and why it was needed.

triumphantly, creating work that was saturated with I talked a lot about leftist art and Chagall, and little about personalities, rich in nuances, and unquestionably the theater. That was natural. Today we can admit that Chagall contemporary in its formal expressiveness. In every trend of forced us to buy the Jewish form of scenic imagery at a high

European and Russian art, in every school, it had leading price. He had no theatrical blood in him. He continued doing representatives. his own drawings and paintings, not drafts of decoration and True, this diapason was too broad. Danger was inherent in costume designs. On the contrary, he turned the actors and the

it. You had to select correctly. The story of Dobuzhinskii production into categories of plastic art. He did not do actual might have been repeated. There were all sorts of people and sets, but simply panels, processing them with various textures, programs. Granovskii had to understand that in the artistic meticulously and in detail, as if the spectator would stand revolution, as in the social revolution, you always have to steer before them at a distance of several feet, as he stands in an the most extreme course; the resultant force of intentions and exhibition, and appreciate, almost touching, the beauty and possibilities will sort itself out. The Yiddish stage needed the subtlety of this colorful field plowed up by Chagall. He did not most "Jewy," the most contemporary, the most unusual, the want to hear about a third dimension, about the depth of the

most difficult of all artists. And so I mentioned Chagall's name stage. Instead, he positioned all his decorations in parallel to Granovskii. Granovskii's always-sleepy eyes opened with a planes, along the apron, as he was accustomed to placing his start and rounded like the eyes of an owl at the sight of meat. paintings on walls or easels. The objects were painted with Next morning, Chagall was summoned and invited to work on Chagallian foreshortening, with his own perspective, which did Sholem Aleichem's miniatures. This was the first production of not consider any perspective of the stage. The spectators saw the Moscow period. Chagall began a dynasty of artist- many perspectives; painted objects were contrasted with real designers. objects; Chagall hated real objects as illegitimate disturbers of his cosmos and furiously hurled them off the stage; with the VI. He had just returned Irom Vitebsk, where he had been same rage, he painted over — one might say plastered with Commissar of Art, but, fed up with power, had abdicated this color — that indispensable minimum of objects. With his own

lofty title. At least, that's his story. The truth was that he was hands, he painted every costume, turning it into a complex deposed by the Suprematist Malevich, who took over Chagall's combination of blots, stripes, dots, and scattering over them students and usurped the art school. He accused Chagall of various muzzles, animals, and doodles. He obviously

being moderate, and of being just a neo-realist, still entangled considered the spectator a fly, which would soar out of its chair, in depicting some objects and figures, when truly sit on Mikhoels's hat [of Reb Alter} and observe with the

revolutionary art is objectless. The students believed in thousand tiny crystals of its fly's eye what he, Chagall, had revolution and found artistic moderation insufferable. Chagall conjured up there. He did not look for types or images — he tried to make some speeches in his own defence, but they were simply took them from his paintings. confused and almost inarticulate. Malevich answered with Of course, under these conditions, the wholeness of the heavy, strong, and crushing words. Suprematism was spectator's impression was complete. When the curtain rose, pronounced the heresy of revolution. Chagall had to leave for Chagall's wall panels and the decorations with the actors on the

(I almost wrote "flee to") Moscow. He didn't know what to do stage simply mirrored each other. But the nature of this and spent the time telling stories about his experience as ensemble was so untheatrical that one might have asked, why commissar in Vitebsk and about the intrigues of the turn off the light in the auditorium, and why do these Suprematists. He loved to recollect the time when, on Chagallian beings move and speak on the stage rather than revolutionary holidays, a banner waved above the school stand unmoving and silent as on his canvases? depicting a man on a green horse and the inscription, "Chagall Ultimately, the Sholem Aleichem Evening was conducted, as

— to Vitebsk." The students still admired him and covered all it were, in the form of Chagall paintings come to life. The best fences and street signs that had survived the Revolution with places were those in which Granovskii executed his system of Chagallian cows and pigs, legs turned down and legs turned "dots" and the actors froze in mid-movement and gesture, from

up. Malevich, after all, was just a dishonorable intrigant, one moment to the next. The narrative line was turned into an whereas he, Chagall, was born in Vitebsk, and knew well what assembly of dots. One needed a marvelous finesse, with which kind of art Vitebsk and the Russian Revolution needed. Mikhoels was endowed, to unify in the role of Reb Alter Meanwhile, he quickly consoled himself with work in the Chagall's static costumes and images with the unfolding of Yiddish theater. He set us no conditions, but also stubbornly speech and action. The spectacle was built on compromise and refused to accept any instructions. We abandoned ourselves to tottered from side to side. The thick, invincible Chagallian God's will. Chagall never left the small auditorium on Jewishness conquered the stage, but the stage was enslaved and

Chernyshevskii Lane. He locked all doors; Granovskii and I not engaged in participation. were the only ones allowed in, after a carping and suspicious We had to break through to the spectacle over Chagall's

1 56 Taxts ctnd Dociimmts "

dead body, as ir were. He was upset by everything that was The Moscow State Yiddish Theater done to make the theater a theater. He cried real, hot, childish Osip Mandelshtarii tears when rows of chairs were placed in the hall with his Originally published, in Russian, in Vechernaia Krasnaia Gazeta, frescoes. He claimed, "These heathen Jews will obstruct my Leningrad. August 10, 1926. The review was included in art, they will rub their thick backs and greasy hair on it." To Mandelshtam's posthumously published CoWtcttd Works (vol. ^) no avail did Granovskii and I, as friends, curse him as an idiot; with the title "Mikhoels. he continued wailing and whining. He attacked workers who carried his handmade sets, claiming that they deliberately On the wooden walkways of an unsightly Byelorussian scratched them. On the day of the premiere, just before shtetl — a big village with a brick factory, a beer hall, front Mikhoels's entrance on the stage, he clutched the actor's yards, and cranes — shuffled a strange figure with long hems, shoulder and frenziedly thrust his brush at him as at a made of an entirely different dough from the whole landscape. mannequin, daubing dots on his costume and painting tiny Through the window of a train, I watched that solitary birds and pigs no opera glass could observe on his vizored cap, pedestrian move like a black cockroach between the little despite repeated, anxious summonses to the stage and houses, among the splashing mud, with splayed arms; and Mikhoels's curt pleas — and again Chagall cried and lamented golden yellow glimmered the black hems of his coat. In his when we ripped the actor out of his hands by force and shoved movements, there was such an estrangement from the whole him onto the stage. situation and, at the same time, such knowledge of the road, as Poor, dear Chagall! He, of course, considered us tyrants and if he had to run and to and fro, like a wind-up toy. himself a martyr. He was so deeply convinced of it that, ever Sure, big deal, never seen: a Jew with long hems on a since, for eight years, he never touched the theater again. He village street. However, I remember well the figure of the never understood that he was the clear and indisputable victor, running Rebbe because, without him, that whole modest and that, in the end, the young Yiddish theater had stuggled landscape lacked justification. The coincidence which that very because of this victory. moment pushed into the street this crazy, charmingly absurd, endlessly refined, porcelain pedestrian helped me understand May 1928 the impression of the State Jewish Theater, which I recently saw for the first time.

Yes, a short while before that, on a Kiev street, I was ready to approach a similar respectable bearded man and ask him,

"Didn't Al'tman do your costume?" I would have asked just like that, with no mockery, quite sincerely: in my head, the

realms grew confused. . . .

How fortunate is Granovskii! It's enough for him to assemble two or three synagogue beadles with a cantor, summon a matchmaker-Shadkhan, catch in the street an

elderly salesman, and a spectacle is ready and, in essence, even

Al'tman is superfluous. This paradoxical theater, which, according to some critics as profound as Dobrolubov, declared war on the Jewish petite bourgeoisie, and which exists only to eradicate prejudices and

superstitions, loses its head, gets drunk like a woman when it sees a Jew, and immediately pulls him into its workshop, to the porcelain factory, scalds and tempers him into a marvelous biscuit, a painted statuette, a green shadkhan-gT&sshopper, brown musicians of Rabichev's Jewish wedding, bankers with shaved layered pates, dancing like virtuous girls, holding hands, in a circle. The plastic fame and force of the Jews consist of having worked out and borne through the centuries a sense of form

and movement, which has all the traits of a fashion immutable

for millennia. I am speaking not of the cut of their clothes,

which changes, and which we need not value (it doesn't even occur to me to justify the ghetto or the shtetl style aesthetically); I'm talking of the internal plasticity of the

ghetto, of that immense artistic force which outlives its

destruction, and will finally flourish only when the ghetto is destroyed. "Violins accompany the wedding dance. Mikhoels approaches the footlights and, stealthily, with the careful movements of a fawn, listens to the music in a minor key. This

is a fawn who has found himself at a Jewish wedding, hesitant, not yet drunk, but already stimulated by the cat-music of a

Jewish minuet. This moment of hesitation is perhaps more expressive than the whole subsequent dance. Tapping on the spot, intoxication comes, a light intoxication from two or three

drinks of grape wine, but this is enough to turn the head of a

Jew: the Jewish Dionysius is undemanding and immediately produces joy.

Texts and Documents 157 During the dance, Mikhoels's face assumes an expression of Jev^ish Luck Viktor Shklovsky

wise weariness and sad exaltation, as if the mask of the Jewish This rei'/eiv of the ip2^film Jewish Luck (Menakhem-Mendel), u'hich

people, approaching antiquity, is almost identical with it. was directed by Granovskii and used the sets and actors of the Yiddish Here the dancing Jew is like the leader of an ancient chorus. Theater, ivas pt/hlished, in Russian, in Evreiskoe Schast'e. Moscow. The whole force ofJudaism, the rhythm of the abstract, Kino-petshat' (Kino-lzdatelstvo RSFSR). 192^. dancing thought, the whole dignity of the dance, whose only

impetus is ultimately empathy with the earth — all this is What does a Jew do? He spins around. — This is itom Jewish absorbed in the trembling hands, the vibration ot his thinking Luck. It was very hard for Jews to spin around. Small towns, fingers, inspired like articulated speech. filled with houses and children. Huts with dilapidated roofs.

Mikhoels is the epitome of national Jewish dandyism — Their own soil only in the cemetery. And that's where they

the dancing Mikhoels, the tailor Soroker, a forty-year-old child, grazed their goats. They lived on air, and that wasn't fresh a blessed shlimazel, a wise and gentle tailor. And yesterday, on either. Jews, separated from productive work, from land and the same stage, Anglicized jockey ragamuffins, on tall girl- factories, a whole nation living in the cracks and interstices of dancers, patriarchs drinking tea in the clouds, like elders on a life. Petty buying and selling, shaving, mending dresses. The porch in Homel. lowest wages in the world. So dense that new buildings weren't constructed because there was nowhere to go during the construction. On the old house they patched up a new one, a wall on top of a wall, a roof above a roof. — Mice have such a disease when their tails grow into each other in the cellar. Thus houses and people grow into each other in Jewish shtetls.

Stifling, closed everyday life, and on the Sabbath, wires encircle the whole town. All around alien fields and alien, hostile people. People in a prison create their own language. The downtrodden are sharp-witted. The best Jewish anecdotes are

created by Jews about themselves. One of those anecdotes is

Sholem Aleichem's story about a man of air, a destitute pauper, a failing and indefatigable tradesman, insurance agent and — finally — matchmaker. Jews say of such people, "He doesn't walk by himself — his guts carry him." — For us, Jewish Luck is almost a historical film. Such Jewish life no longer exists. The Civil War hit them hard. Pogroms rolled through the shtetl. The very places where the pasted-together huts stood were plowed up. Hunger came in the wake of the pogroms. In Kherson, orthodox Jews, fearing they would die in the general devastation and not be buried by the rules, came to the cemetery and lined up for death. The Revolution was a hulling mill for the Jews. The old closed world was shattered. Everyday

life is finished. Small trade, middleman trade, was crushed under the pressure of state capitalism and cooperatives. In the

new tight life there was no room to spin around. But the Revolution removed all limitations from the Jews and destroyed the most essential trait of the Jews — the Pale of Settlement. The plants and factories were opened for Jewish workers. The proletarian supplanted the artisan. And instead of the right to graze a goat in a cemetery, Jews got the right to the land. Now, in Byelorussia and at the Azov Sea, an immense

work to grant land to the Jews is proceeding. Kolkhozes

emerge, the soil is irrigated. Now it is clear that Zionism, a Jewish state in Palestine, will produce only a southern resort for rich Jews. A patriotic resort with oranges. The Jewish colonies at the Azov Sea get 1,620,000 acres. In the Soviet state, a new autonomous district will be adcled, perhaps a new republic. — No need to pity the torn umbrella of Menakhem- Mendel, no need to look for romanticism in the past, in the grown-together tails of a mouse cellar. But we need to know

the old daily life. Director Granovskii has succeeded in

reconstructing much of the past in his film. The film is

theatrical. Granovskii doesn't want to sell his "theatrical sword." But in film, you don't need swords, you need to know the technique. Therefore, the film has a new handwriting for

the cinema. There is real everyday life. The artist Natan

Al'tman has treated his task very carefully. Natan Al'tman is a person with great national culture, a person with his own face.

But the film, as I said, is a historical work, in it "thus it was" is

more important than "thus I want it to be." Al'tman constructed the Jewish rooms well; he did not overburden them with details, he hid his work in the film as the

158 Texts and Documents illuminator hides his work. Light in a film should shed light Five Years of the State Yiddish Chamber Theater and not appear as a separate item in the program. The titles in (1919-1924) M. Litvakov the film are made by Isaac Babel. They exploit the material of Excerptedfrom an essay, in Russian, published in Moscow in 1924 by the film well and are closely connected with the actors. They Shul iin bukh. are not titles but conversations. They are speech. They endow the film with the charm of the human voice. I. Theater and Revolution.

In quiet epochs all arts, including art of the theater, lead a

quiet life. They digest and transform the achievements of the

past epoch o{ Sturm mid Drang into facts of daily life. They

express the tempos and rhythms of the inertia that has set in.

But revolutionary epochs, toppling all previous foundations of

life, also shake up the arts. And what art is as sensitive to social

upheavals as the art of the theater? For theater is the most social of all arts; theater lives only in an audience, and not only does the actor infect the auditorium, but the auditorium also has a powerful impact on the actor and on the spectacle as a whole.

Why is it that, in Moscow, this center of world revolution, we feel such an indescribable theatrical chaos, a real world- confusion, a noisy brouhaha? The continuous destruction of old theater foundations and the painful search for new ones, the feverish toppling of old gods and the wild pursuit of new

idols? Where does it come from?

If it had remained in the hands of the famous caste of art-

priests, everything would have stayed as it was, with no

changes. Because there is no more moldy, organically conservative social stratum than this stratum of narcissistic Dalai Lamas. But the spectator has changed. The spectator, the audience — with no distinction of class or social group — that emerged from the mangle of the great imperialist war and that, to this day, lives under the pressure of the workers' revolution — in short, the public of the epoch of the October Revolution and the Comintern — conceals in its soul, consciously or not, powderkegs of storm-alarms and dynamic

unrest. Bourgeois idylls a la The Cricket on the Hearth don't get into their heads, and the boring sighs of pre-Revolutionary petit bourgeois in various "cherry orchards" cannot calm their firestorm yearning. But a completely unexpected bankruptcy occurred, not only with respect to the content of the theatrical spectacle, but also with respect to form. This creeping realistic description of

daily life we are sick of, this antiquated loyalty to forgotten details — all this smacks of a museum of antiquities and not of the burgeoning art of throbbing contemporaneity. Naturally, to the extent that, in such a theater, we feel vigorous mastery, even of the old style, we may watch the spectacle with some enjoyment: dear past. And those social groups who look in various ways for such sanctuaries where the thunder of the impetuous revolution cannot reach would give such theaters top priority. But here art absolutely ceases being a moving force of the

cultural development of the masses; it is transformed into a

store of "sublime swindle" (Pushkin), which is dearer to some

" than a "wealth of mundane truths. Other theaters, the theaters of today, which strive to keep pace with the Revolution and consider themselves only a

segment of its immense front, strive to expose this "wealth of mundane truths." They aim at exploding the hidden

powderkegs of unrest in the soul of the spectator, they lift him forcibly on the waves of dynamic tempos, leaping rhythms, dazzling colors, and dizzying movements. One of the most conspicuous theaters of this type — and

such theaters are scarce even in the Soviet Union — is the State Yiddish Chamber Theater.

2. Theater and Comedians of Revolutionary Joy. For many years, pious intellectuals and anxious caretakers of

Texts and Documents 1 59 the spirit have been preparing to build a "serious" Yiddish of sets and music (where the necessity of music is dictated by theater. What did they mean by "serious" theater? Lengthy the organic logic of the scenic intention), white-hot rhythm, exphcations of literature on the stage through exhaustive dazzling collaborations of light, provocative expressiveness of emoting by the actors. In the old Yiddish theater, they denied color, multifunctionality and vividness in every inch of the not only its latter-day popular smut, but also what remained stage boards — such are the principle features of any spectacle

intact: the mobility, the popular trumpeting, the harlequinade, of the Yiddish Chamber Theater. And it is all dominated by the ecstasy of the whole body. The ideal was at least some the liberated body and the firm and elastic spirit of the actor.

reflection of the Moscow Art Theater, where the twisted soul of What is primary in the Chamber Theater — the whole

the Russian intelligentsia would be transformed into the ensemble or the individual comedian? It is hard to tell. One Jewish piety of a small town grandson of the Besht — in short, thing is clear — the Yiddish Chamber Theater created the new, a kind of Yiddishist HaBima. free, joyous, agile Jewish comedian, the comedian of the But instead they got the State Yiddish Chamber Theater! liberated proletariat. It has also created a joyous ensemble —

And revolution, according to the petit-bourgeois caretakers a new kapelye [orchestra], and "a Kapelye is more than a

of the spirit, is just asceticism, a kind of monkish withdrawal minyan" — according to one of Peretz's characters. from the world. Poverty with no light or color, nakedness of

body, and emptiness of soul. 3. Theater of Organized Rationality.

But it turns out that the masses who make the revolution Therefore, the State Yiddish Chamber Theater has many foes

are much richer in life, light, colors, movement, and joy than and even more friends. Each new production provokes, on the the peripheral people-providers, for, precisely because they one hand, excited recognition, and, on the other hand, wild possess all that, can they go to revolution and triumph! rage. But soon, many of the most "outraged" begin to attend And the State Yiddish Theater came precisely as one the loathsome spectacle, declaring in embarrassment that "you

expression of that mass ecstasy. It is the embodiment of have to get used to it."

"serving with joy" — serving art with joy, with impetus. And This in itself shows that the Yiddish Chamber Theater is the ecstasy does not lie hidden in the soul, but gushes from not just a theater where "the actor does an act, and the every limb of the body. spectator casts a glance," but one of the institutions that does A treasure of light, a wealth of colors, a chasm ol battle in the domain of art in Moscow, and, indeed, in the

movement, a richness of rhythms — this is what the Yiddish entire Soviet Union. Chamber Theater has discovered for the Jewish working The success and triumph of the State Yiddish Chamber

masses. A liberated body which is the organic collaborator of Theater was determined by its artistic essence.

the liberated spirit. Both serve the red virgin soil of revolution, First, this is the first and so far the only Yiddish theater

and are hostile to all vestiges of Jewishy junk. The Jewish with mastery of a European theater style. Before the State grimace, which they tried for generations to transform into an Yiddish Chamber Theater, Jewishy "culture-providers" only idly Jewishy feature, the Jewish gesture, which was supposed dreamed of a "real" Yiddish theater; small-town Talmudists, to remain forever godly pious — here they have become new, however, took great pains to realize this dream, through hair- free, sharp gestures of an epoch of "iron and concrete." splitting arguments about the theories and methods of an art

The ecstasy in the Yiddish Chamber Theater is not theater. And here in the Chamber Theater true theatrical arbitrary, not spontaneous, but regulated, planned. For we live mastery came and declared, "I am!" And, though unexpected,

in an epoch when the spontaneous thrust of the masses is it came full oijoie de I'ivre, young, confident, like all the regulated by the genius of collective rationality — through the creations of October. avant-garde of the working class, the Communist Party, A new director and a new comedian arrived for whom

planned economy, rationalized working processes. And as in "Jewishness" — that is, nationalistic smugness and folkloristic political-economic life in general, so in the life of art is ecstasy shmaltz — was totally alien. The key to the theatrical re- not weakened by the progressive consciousness and calculation, creation of Jewish folklore was found for the first time by the

but rather is strengthened and attains its greatest triumphs. An State Yiddish Chamber Theater — first in its performance of

expression of that is the State Yiddish Chamber Theater. Sholem Aleichem's miniatures and then in the other works, In the Sholetn Alekhem Evening, we see the mathematical especially in The Sorceress. fantastic. The generally known and almost banal Menakhem- But the chief property of the Yiddish Chamber Theater,

Mendel is elevated by the artist Mikhoels to the level of an which attracts more attention than any other, I would say, is

unforgettable art symbol; for the first time, an artistic, scenic its "planned creation," or the rationalist methods of its artistic

embodiment is found for the popular-Yiddish Don Quixote, work. Reb Alter. The Yiddish Chamber Theater completely rejects the In Uriel Accosta, the unrest of Uriel's free thought merges method of "experiencing," the cult of emotionality. Above the wonderfully with the unrest of Al'tman's decorations; the "kingdom of necessity" — above the spontaneous force of enraged narrowness of the representatives of religious unregulated feelings — it puts the "kingdom of freedom " —

fanaticism is amazingly framed in Al'tman's ornate the organized and determining understanding. Hence, in the mannequins. An artistic-rational approach to the tragedy of the productions of the Yiddish Chamber Theater, mathematical tottering free thought of the late Middle Ages was found here. formulas were transformed into intuitive revelations, which, Not to mention The Sorceress\ Such a plethora of colors, a after the fact, when the habituated spectator begins to grasp treasure of movements, wealth of sounds — Jewish art has them, appear as intuitive revelations, distinguished by the never before provided such a dizzying rush of folk masses, surprising obviousness of mathematical formulas. liberated from their Jewishy Diaspora essence. This explains the interesting and "sensational" gestures of

Here an immense and joyous theatrical explosion was the Yiddish Chamber Theater, its groupings and pauses, which

brought together, aiming its full blade against the social and seem outlandish at first glance. The Sholem Aleichem spectacle

the spiritual, and especially against artistic junk. initially provoked embarrassment, anger, even rage, and now it

Mathematical conspicuousness of gesture, precisely is already a canonized spectacle; many of the former protestors calculated movements, with a rapid tempo, laying bare the even tend to think that the theater condescended to them and

skeleton of the theatrical narrative in the resonating interplay "softened" its gestures. The same holds for Uriel Accosta,

1 60 Texts and Doinments perhaps the best work of the Yiddish ChamLx-r Theater: in with — the frontline of European culture. For the Chamber

Uriel, theatrical mastery, based on rationahst ecstasy or ecstatic Theater is indeed a Jewish theater, but it has attained its value rationahsm, achieves a high level and tension. outside the framework of purely Jewish art culture. In this very

And even in The Sorceress, m this most dynamic spectacle, respect, it is the first and thus far the only October tilled with light, dance, brouhaha, notwithstanding the achievement of Yiddish mass culture.

external emotionality of the staging and acting, there is a But not only in this respect.

rigorous calculation and mathematical forging: precisely Usually, people imagine that October art is art that speaks

because of that, the emotional saturation is achieved, and not directly about barricade battles, red banners, the hammer and vice versa. sickle, shears and iron, bloodsucking capitalists, and oppressed

The same is true for Sholem Aleichem's Great Prize and proletarians. This is, of course, an over-simplified, vulgar other productions, from the most monumental to the smallest position. If that were so, we should, for example, have comedian skits, such as Three Dots and even Warsaw Thieves and renounced any proletarian or revolutionary music. For music Comedians' Carnival. speaks with tones and not with generally accessible words or

And not only is this theater inspired by the artists, but it paintings. Yet there is revolutionary music, and proletarian also inspires them, mobilizing each of them for a specific work music is possible insofar as proletarian art in general is in the style and spirit of the given artist, yet still within the possible. rigorous plan of the given piece. For Sholem Aleichem's Revolutionary art in general, and October art in particular, sleepwalking characters, who see raging dreams in a quite is revolutionary not just in terms of its concrete themes and calculated "reality," the theater found Chagall, who, for his motifs, but in terms of its spirit, the moods it evokes, its play part, found the Yiddish Chamber Theater. Such an ideal of colors, its rhythms, its tempos, the enchanted world into merger of a theater and an artist is rarely achieved. Sholem which it transposes us, the ideological thrust that dominates it. Aleichem's characters, embodied by the artists on the stage of For art has methods of influence different from those of the Yiddish Chamber Theater, in the costumes and framework journalism. It remains art only when it leads to political of Chagall's designs, which, despite their fantastic mood, are conclusions, through its own ways and methods. If it is only structured rationally and calculated mathematically — this is a journalistic it is not art, but simply agitation. If, however, it beautiful theatrical spectacle, which gives the Jewish spectator lacks agitational conclusions, it is socially dead even when it a new literary Sholem Aleichem. The same wonderful accord has purely formal achievements. And the Chamber Theater is between the creative intention of the theater and its decorative the only theater here, and one of the few theaters in the whole realization by an artist is achieved in Uriel Accosta. In his Soviet Union, where a synthesis has been found between formal design, the artist Al'tman expresses almost with genius the achievements and the ideological sediment of the October unrest of the struggling free thought in the context of religious period. fanaticism, indicated through a world of pompous mannequins. Al'tman's rationalist thinginess best matches 5. In the Rhythm of October.

Granovskii's methods. The Yiddish Chamber Theater is not a proletarian theater and And in The Sorceress, the bright, vivacious, Chagallized does not claim to be. The Yiddish Chamber Theater, however, realism of I. Rabinovich proved itself a real revelation for the is the only theater that is acceptable for the proletariat. tasks of the Yiddish Chamber Theater. Why? And then comes the ideological revolutionary aspect of the The Yiddish Chamber Theater rejects the methods of theater: the merciless revelation of the Jewish lifestyle, and the internal emotings which are explicated in a literary manner on constant exposure of the flaccidity of the past, the theater's the stage; it provides theatrical actions that attain a colossal biting, life-loving mockery of the elements of the religious- value even for purely literary works. The method of emoting nationalistic milieu, its striving to October. cripples even collective actions and degrades them to the level All this makes the State Yiddish Chamber Theater one of of individualistic brooding, whereas the method of theatrical the first-rate contemporary European theaters, beloved and action elevates even the internal experiences of the individual

dear to the Jewish worker. . . . to the level of a moment in the collective being.

This is because the Yiddish Chamber Theater bases its

4. Theater and Yiddish Mass Culture. creation not on emotion, but on rationality; that is, not on the [Before October,] literature held the hegemony in our cultural spontaneous force of unregulated feeling, but on the creativity. It led, stimulated, organized, and clustered the calculation of an organized understanding. It evokes feelings forces in all other areas of art. And its creativity itself through the mathematical emphasis of rationality, through proceeded in the spirit of that epoch — in the spirit of internal creation rather than spontaneous outbursts, which is entirely in Jewish narrowness. In a certain sense, Yiddish literature did the spirit of our October epoch. not completely withstand the pressure of October, and now it Meierkhol'd in Moscow and Kurbas in Kiev follow the struggles consciously to overcome the crisis stemming from the same path, but they turn the material apparatus of the theater previous, unfinished epoch. into a machine, while Granovskii rationalizes the living material of Our theater did not have the rich, though often difficult, the theater. Of course, we cannot feel the present epoch traditions of literature — therefore, it was easier for the theater without revealing its industrialism, without technical to absorb the thrust of October. So the Yiddish Chamber constructions, and therefore Meierkhol'd's and Kurbas 's work Theater was created. are a great achievement for the future theater of the proletariat.

The Chamber Theater did indeed emerge from the soil of But through such a method, we may eventually be able to feel massive accumulated creative energy, yet its impulse still came the technical milieu of the worker — though not the worker from outside. Dimensions never before seen in the Jewish himself, and not his living nature. Therefore, in Meierkhol'd's milieu, rhythms, and tempos never before heard or felt, and Kurbas's theaters we remember only technical achievements never before experienced were the triumphs of construction, while in the Yiddish Chamber Theater we this theater. For the first time in the history of Yiddish culture remember living figures and excited masses. Therefore, those in general and of our mass culture in particular, there was a theaters may be revolutionary only when they perform concrete cultural creation that measured itself by — and was aligned revolutionary plays which speak tor themselves, while the

Texts anJ Documents 161 " "

Yiddish Chamber Theater is always revolutionary, regardless of Now the Yiddish Chamber Theater celebrates its fifth

its repertoire, because technique alone can also serve, did serve, anniversary, crowned with general and full recognition. At its and still serves the bourgeoisie, but living flesh and blood celebration, it will have completed 300 performances of the

serves only itself. same, initially sensational, now canonized Sholem Aleichem

Evening. . . . The Sholem Aleichem Evening. Three hundred performances in four years! Not a small

The Yiddish Chamber Theater was a true revelation in our production program. . . . cultural creation, and this revelation came from the wintry

north, from Petersburg. Permit me to quote myself. I once wrote about Sholem We had old centers of our mass cultural creation: Warsaw, Aleichem: Vilna, later Kiev. In the course of generations, our mass life

was created there; there our literature emerged and developed, The major traits of Sholem Aleichem's writings are daydreaming there too the first dreams took shape of a real, artistic Yiddish and skepticism: their unique combination creates lyrical irony, the

theater. They dreamed — but nothing came of it. Then active lyric-Jewish humor. The daydreaming endows the skepticism with a

agitation was conducted for a "true" theater. The first who hopeful character, it leaves the door open for the eternal ''perhaps yes.

began to suffer and torment himself was Peretz Hirshbeyn; The skepticism brings "a fair in the sky" {castles in the air} down to

then Vayter began working toward this goal, and eventually earth and transforms tangible life itself into a dream, into a question- Peretz himself took over the task. niark. This daydreaming that gives wings of hope to doubt, this doubt

Under the impact of this heroic company, the unhappiness that is willing meanwhile to deny the dreams, give in their coupling

with the "old Yiddish theater," indeed, grew deeper — some the deep simplicity, the elementary force that often becomes

signs of a new theater culture even appeared, but no new the work ofa genius. They undress the soul, taking off all the theater came out of it. inherited socio-cultural layers, and show it in its original form at Meanwhile, a kind of historic-cultural entanglement arose. the "time of Creation.

For a long time, literature was the only element of our new Sholem Aleichem's lyricism, his lyrical hunuw. reveals the

culture. In time, literature also became the central elementary force 'in the Jewish psyche. True, it is the psyche of certain organizational focus for all other domains of our artistic Jewish strata in a specific historical epoch, but he succeeded in

culture. And literature was the first to suffer in its isolation getting to the root, discovering our psychic skeleton. The unique because of the actual lack of those other areas. Thus, from coupling of daydreaming and skepticism in his lyrical work create leading an active campaign to bring them to life, a damaging the world of chaos in which his enchantedfigures spin around like illusion emerged in literature that it was destined always to be primitive marionettes. They say words that are so elementary and the ruler, lawgiver, and tone-giver in those areas of art both obvious, that are really on the tip ofyour tongue, that we are during their emergence and after they had emerged. Writers amazed that we didn't predict them ourselves, and yet they are became convinced that all other areas of art — painting, music, always new, as an artistic discovery. Their movements and grimaces

and especially theater — would and must be only appendices are the eternally old-new — and it often seems to us that we

to literature and would have to follow its directives. And if didn't see it first in Sholem Aleichem but that he copied it readymade

literature was creative in its own domain, in its relation to from us.

those other areas, especially the theater, it became a pure {In Umru. Kiev: 1918, pp. 93-94.) culture-bearer, didactic, and Jewishly dilettantish. And suddenly — Petersburg! Daydreaming and skepticism, dream and doubt — those Petersburg? are the two basic areas of the human psyche: the areas of The city of the "Disseminators of Enlightenment," of emotionalism and rationalism, spontaneity of feeling and the the Baron Ginzburg family, oiVoskhod, of Slyozberg and kingdom of rationality. We shall not enter into an argument

Gruzenberg, of Vinaver and "Deputy Friedman," of Bramson about what causes what. I think that moving from the and Pereferkovich — in a word, the city of Jewish plutocratic "kingdom of necessity" to the "kingdom of freedom" means

junk — how is it related to the cultural creation of the Jewish that our future life will be regulated by rationality and not by masses? spontaneous feeling, on condition that rationality itself will by Hence everyone was skeptical about the Yiddish Chamber then have the clairvoyance of feeling. Theater made in Petersburg. We know the "Societies for the But the Yiddish Chamber Theater evokes in us clearcur Encouragement of Jewish Art" that used to emerge in conceptions about Sholem Aleichem's figures and their chaotic Petersburg, with doctors, lawyers, and often led by State world through methods of rationalistic creation. Menakhem-

Counsellors. Mendel Yakenhoz (Mikhoels) reaches us, after all, as living and

All of a sudden the Yiddish Chamber Theater moved to feeling flesh and blood. But we can see tangibly that this is

Moscow and gave its first performance: Sholem Aleichem Evening. achieved through an iron band of mathematical movements

It was an incredible sensation. and gestures. Only thus is his "psychic skeleton" revealed to us,

It was profanation enough that the theater was born from which, covered with skin and flesh, endless variations of

without the midwifery of literature, but it also dared to Menakhem-Mendel can blossom. Or take Reb Alter in Mazel

manifest its independence in a Sholem Aleichem performance! Tov. Here we see through the "bare mathematics," the

Isn't Sholem Aleichem all "ours"? Don't we all know how he "elementary simplicity that often becomes a work of genius." must be "interpreted" on the stage, what movements, gestures, Dressed in Chagall's costumes and surrounded by Chagall's

and grimaces the performers must make, what decorative designs, which, with all their fantasy, are rigorously calculated,

illustrations there must be — and here is everything topsy- mathematically concrete, they become those "enchanted

turvy! figures" that remind us of "almost primitive marionettes " that

There was a hue and cry. Literature didn't recognize its can give rise to a plethora of new types.

dream image and began blocking the theater. . . . Or take the episode It's a Lie! Through the impulsive Several years of literary-dilettantish siege passed, supported speech of two skeptical, daydreaming figures in Sholem by the Jewishy petit-bourgeois small-mindedness of "everyday" Aleichem's Jewish world of chaos, confined in the iron grating Jews; and the Chamber Theater triumphed on the whole front. of calculated movements and gestures and caged in Chagallized

1 62 Texts and Documents Al'tmanish frames, we feel and palpably perceive, newly discovered, two Jewish luftmentsh figures. Because of a misunderstanding, our literature initially

negated the Sholem Aleichmi Evming. But, in fact, it was and

remained a powerful impetus for literature itself, for it created an entirely new key to understanding and grasping one of the founders of our modern literature. For the first time, Sholem Aleichem received the classical, truly artistic embodiment of his figures. In the Chamber Theater, Sholem Aleichem was just a beginning and a herald — The Sorceress proved what the new

Yiddish Theater can make even of Goldfaden. . . .

It is good that the twin sisters in our art culture finally recognized each other and learned to live together. This is one of the best laurel wreaths for the Yiddish Chamber Theater on

its fifth anniversary. . . .

The Yiddish Chamber Theater has found the secret of Jewish gesture, Jewish movement, Jewish plastics and dynamics, and, peeling the skin ofJewishy "wheeling-dealing" off it, the theater discovered the boundary where the national is transformed into the international. The theater created such a Jewish theater style, which can justly claim to be one of the styles which will in their ensemble construct the new style of the future international freedom-theater. By the force of an immense socio-cultural leap, of which the theater is capable, it filled the gap in Jewish theater culture — the absence of artistic traditions. At one and the same time, the theater creates artistic traditions that bear the value of generations of culture, and also overcomes them, transforming them into only elements of an artistic tradition. The theater found the magic key to the treasures of Jewish folklore which it poetically reshapes into works of art of a new mass culture.

Texts and Documents 1 63 Agents: A Joke In One Act (1905) Shohm AUichem

Agents was one of three plays performed at the Sholem Aleichem Evening, the first production by the State

Yiddish Chamber Theater. In this translation frniii the Yiddish, those phrases that were originally to be spoken in Russian are rendered in French.

Cast Menakhem-Mendel A young man from a small town, dressed in a new outfit fresh from the needle, with a new Yakenhoz' fedora (which doesn't sit well on his head), and with a collar that squeezes his eyes out of his forehead. In his lap he holds a large briefcase, also new.

Mark Moyseyevich A young dandy. Also with a large briefcase. Lanternshooter

Akim Isaakovich Bakingfish A stout character who values eating. Also with a large briefcase.

Lazar Konstantinovich A character with a big beard and a big family: a wife with several children, each one smaller Turtledove than the next.

Various characters, extras The action takes place on the road, in a third-class train car.

Scene 1

{In a train. Several characters sit, some lie stretched out, some sleep. On the racks, packages, valises. Up front, alone on a bench, close to the window, sits Menakhem-Mendel, observing his new outfit, talking to himself}

Menakhem-Mendel Have they piled up clothes on me — like a bridegroom! All dolled up — like a bride! One

problem — the pants are just a little bit too snug; and the collar . . . Oy, the collar! Just made for

choking! . . . I'm traveling on a train. Do I know where I'm traveling? You will be, they said, a

good agent. Your name alone, they said, will do it! Isn't it something, the name itself:

Menakhem-Mendel Yakenhoz, who is known, they say, like a bad penny, everywhere: in Yehupets, in Boyberik, in Mazepevke, and where not? Travel, they said, among your little Jews, and be a success! Condemnify, they said, people from death .... To condemnify people from

death? How do you start to condemnify somebody from death? May I know such a bad supper! Though they crammed into me for two days the agent's Torah, and an "advance" they also gave

me, and this is the main thing because all agents take "advances." If there were no "advances," they say, there would be no agents. ... In addition to that, they filled me up a full briefcase with

constitutions — institutions, I mean — how an agent should operate when he condemnifies

somebody from death. I must start in right away on the constitutions — institutions, I mean. . . . {Opens the briefcase andpulls out a letter} Oh! Just mention Messiah — and you get a letter from

Sheyne-Sheyndl! How does my mother-in-law put it: "When you look for scissors, you find a

broom." . . . Still, you have to read again what she writes, your better half, may she have a long

life. Anyway, it's boring on the train, nothing to do. {Reads the letter} "To my Honorable, Dear, Famous, Sage husband ..." In short, "Our Teacher and Rabbi Reb Menakhem-Mendel, May his

Light Illuminate. First of all, I come to inform you that we are all, thank God, in the best of

." health, may God let us hear the same from you, not worse, in the days to come . . {Breaks off}

Thank the Almighty, blessed be He, at least in good health. {Reads on} "Second of all, I am

writing to you that you should have as much strength, you piece of a convert ..." {Breaks off} Already! She starts already with her blessings! {Reads on} "You should have as much strength, you

piece of a convert, to wallow there in your disease, in the desolate, dark Yehupets, may it burn

together with you in one fire, as much as I have strength to trip over my feet, for after all, the handsome doctor told me to lie in bed — may he lie in the cemetery next to you, as mama ." "... says . . {Breaks off} Aha! As mama says! {Reads on} as mama says, so it'll be cozier for you

on the long winter nights. . . . What kind of new garbage — a new livelihood God sent down to

him, my breadwinner! He will condemnify people to death! What does it mean, Mendel, that

you will condemnify people to death? What for?" {Breaks off} She doesn't begin to understand what you write to her! {Reads on} "You're clean out of your mind — may you go out of your mind ." for all the Jews and for all the, not to put them in the same breath, Goyim, as mama says . .

{Breaks off} There she goes again with mama! {Reads on} "... as mama says, a horse, when you let

go of the reins, lifts its tail too. It's not enough, that is, that you followed over and over all pagan rites, you were everything in the book: a dealer — a wheeler, a buyer — a liar, a matchmaker — a heartbreaker, a pester — a jester, so that the whole world has to deal with you — you also have to try out trading with dead living corpses, as mama may she live says: wait a minute, he will

soon dress you up as a wetnurse somewhere in Poland! . . . Wouldn't it have been a thousand

." times better if you should, for example, be now in the war with Jampony . . {Breaks off} Oh " yes, of course! I'm flying right away! {Reads on} . . . and return home in such a state, God forbid, like our Moyshe-Velvel Lcvi-Avrom came back, a dark night on me, with no arms and no legs

1 64 Texts and Documents and no body and no soul, as mama says, does the bullet know who it shoots? ... So remember,

Mendel, this time I'm saying it with good wishes: may a commotion, a fire, a plague fall on you. ..."

Scene 2

[La/Jlermhooter walks into the compartment with a big valise, looks for a place to sit down]

Lanternshooter Permettez-moi?

Menakhem-Mendel [Hides the letter in his briefcase] Oh. po//rcj//oi non? [To himself] A fine personage with a pretty

valise . . . Maybe he'll let me condemnily him from death?

Lanternshooter [Tends to his valise, sits down next to Menakhem-Mendel . pulls out a cigarette] Avez-voi/s dii feu? [To himself] II faiit examiner la terre — a squeeze in the wagon.

Menakhem-Mendel Oh! PoiirqiKn noii^ [Gives him a match. Talks to himself] Better he starts first.

Lanternsliooter [Offers him a cigarette] S'il vo//s plait'f [To himself] IJn convenahle subject ... A provincial with a new

outfit . . . Maybe we can do business with him? Just a little insurance to cover expenses . . .

Menakhem-Mendel [Takes the cigarette] Oh! Poitrqtioi non^ [Lights the cigarette. Talks to himself] On the face of it, a pretty solid citizen. God willing, he will condemnify himself from death.

Lanternshooter [To himselj ] With such a jerk you can talk Yiddish. [Starts talking Yiddish] A pleasure to travel

by train. . . . Not like it used to be! When you traveled by wagon, you used to, vous comprenez, drag on and on and on.

Menakhem-Mendel [Repeats after him] Drag on and on and on.

Lanternshooter You were m Diaspora in the hands of the carter, like clay in the Makers hand.

Menakhem-Mendel Like clay in the Maker's hand.

Lanternshooter He would pack a covered wagon with characters of various and sundry sort.

Menakhem-Mendel Various and sundry sorts.

Lanternshooter Jews, females, a sack of flour, and a cantor, and a goat, and a priest . . .

Menakhem-Mendel And a goat, and a priest . . .

Lanternshooter And as you went uphill, he told the characters to make the ellort to get out, forgive the inconvenience.

Menakhem-Mendel Forgive the inconvenience.

Lanternshooter And today I'm a lord. I sit, vo/is comprenez, in a compartment and smoke a cigarette, ex. je siiis a mon

aise\

Menakhem-Mendel A mon aise\

Lanternshooter The old traveling did have one advantage — your life was safe. You weren't afraid, God forbid, of

an accident, a catastrophe, that is, ot turning over, voiis comprenez, and flying like dumplings, upside down.

Menakhem-Mendel Like dumplings, upside down.

Lanternshooter It's good to be protected with several thousand rubles after your death, so your wife and children shouldn't, God forbid, vous comprenez, go begging in the streets

Menakhem-Mendel Go begging in the streets . . .[To himself] He walks straight into it like a good horse. . . .

Lanternshooter [To himsdj ] He follows me like a good colt! [Aloud] For, vous comprenez, as long as the wheel

turns, it turns.

Menakhem-Mendel It turns.

Texts and Documents 1 65 Lanternshooter And when it stops turning, it's — stop, machine!

Menakhem-Mendel Stop, machine!

Lanternshooter \To hiDiself] He follows nicely. Let's go with him straight to the stable. [Aloi/d} The problem is,

not everyone can protect himself with money. Today's expenses, irji/s compreiiez, with today-ay-ay-

ay .. .

Menakhem-Mendel With today-ay-ay-ay . . .

Lanternshooter So at least, to//t an iiioiiis, nu petit insurance.

~\ Menakhem-Mendel Un petit insurance . . . [To himself It's really something right from heaven, my word!

Lanternshooter I just now recalled something that happened in our town. One simple citizen who never had a

thousand rubles in his life, vot/s comprenez, never saw the eyes of a hundred-ruble bill, still had the

good sense to insure himself in time for several thousand rubles. Now he died, traveling, may it not happen to you, in a train, so they paid his wife in our town not much but five thousand rubles cash, one by one!

Menakhem-Mendel Cash, one by one! Just the same as in our town. In our town too something happened — not with

five, but with ten thousand rubles. May God so help me wherever I turn!

Lanternshooter {Excited^ Ten thousand rubles?

Menakhem-Mendel Ten thousand rubles.

Lanternshooter What did they do with such a sum of money?

Menakhem-Mendel What should they do? They opened a store, a clever store!

Lanternshooter Really? N//? And they make some money?

Menakhem-Mendel And how! A treasure of a fortune!

Lanternshooter \To huuselj } This is the best moment. Let's take him for a ride. \Al()iid\ What can you say,

envy a dead corpse; but when you remember the living, I'oiis coinprenez. . . . Everybody has a wife

and children. . . . [Sighs] Everybody has to do it.

Menakhem-Mendel [Sighs] Listen, this is what I'm talking about! [To himself] This is the best time. Let's rope him in.

Lanternshooter [Sighs] Blessed be he who does it in time.

Menakhem-Mendel [Sighs] If you have good sense, you put the cart before the horse, you . . . and it's not expensive

either. How much can it cost?

Lanternshooter [Excited] It depends on your years. I mean, can we indeed do it here?

Menakhem-Mendel [Excited] Why not?

Lanternshooter A doctor we can get later, submit an affadavit, voi/s coinprenez . . .

Menakhem-Mendel This is my last worry. The main thing is the sum.

Lanternshooter [Grabs his briefcase] The main thing isn't the sum, the main thing is the years.

Menakhem-Mendel [Grabs his briefcase] Normally, the years. For example, how old are you?

Lanternshooter Me? What does it matter how old I am?

Menakhem-Mendel What do you mean what does it matter? You said yourself the main thing is the years, didn't you?

Lanternshooter What do you mean? You want to indemnify me ?

Menakhem-Mendel What else? You want to condemnify me ?

1 66 Texts and Dociimenti .

Lanternshooter Are you an agent too?

Menakhem-Mendel And how! Not just an agent, a sup-agent!

Lanternshooter {Stands lip. shakes his hand and introduces himselfpolitely, but arroganHy~\ Mark Moyseyevich Lanternshooter, Agent Acquereur Regional of "Equitable."

Menakhem-Mendel {Stands up and introduces himself elegantly'^ Menakhem-Mendel Yakenhoz, Sup-agent of "Yakir."

Scene 3

{Bakingfish enters the compartment with two valises and looks for a place to sit dou'n]

Bakingfish Vous per}?iettez?

Lanternshooter S'il vous plait.

Menakhem-Mendel Play!

Bakin^tish {Sits down opposite, spreads his valises around. He opens one valise and takes out bottles and boxes with

various foods, puts the second valise upright, like a table, and starts eating} On the road, you hear, it's

good to carry everything with you, because you can't get what you need at every station, and I

don't eat everything they give me. Fm afraid for my stomach. That is, not, God forbid, that I

have a sick stomach, may it go on forever, but Fm afraid not to spoil it. The stomach, you hear, is

a kettle. If, God forbid, the kettle stops cooking, then the whole machine is kaput. {Opens a bottle

and pours himselfa drink] L'Chaim, Jews, to your health. {Pours another drink and offers it to Menakhem-Mendel] Forgive me, will you have a little sip? My own home brew from orange peels.

Menakhem-Mendel {To himself] A real friendly person. Maybe we could condemnify him from death? {Aloud] Thank

you! Better offer it to him. {Points to Lanternshooter]

Lanternshooter {To Menakhem-Mendel ] Drink up. {To himself] A friendly subject. We could indemnify him, to

cover expenses . .

Bakingfish {Has another drink and offers one to Lanternshooter] Have a sip, I beg you, of a good little drink and

wash it down with these sardelles. Exquisite sardelles. Hah? What do you say? Aren't they good

sardelles? Aren't they fresh? I don't move without sardelles. Don't ask, who knows what may happen on the road. On the road, you have to watch out for your food, because your health, you hear, is the most precious thing in the world. {Opens a bundle of kishke (dried stuffed derma), eats, and offers them some] Since you already tasted my sardelles, you have to taste my dried kishke too.

Don't be scared, it's fresh and kosher, too. L if 1 buy kishke, I don't buy just any old kishke. Health, you hear, is the most precious thing in the world. Because, if you think about death,

you're not sure of your life, and especially if you left at home a wife with two little kids like two eyes in your head.

Lanternshooter {Eats] No more than two?

Menakhem-Mendel Only two?

Bakingtish {Chewing] Not enough? And if, God forbid, you pick yourself up and drop dead?

Lanternshooter {Eats] With your complexion?

Menakhem-Mendel {Eats] Kenna-hora, no evil eye should see it, with your looks?

Bakingfish {Chewing] Don't look at me that Fm so ... If I hadn't supported myself with food, I would already have — Eh-heh-heh! {Opens another bundle] Come on, will you taste, forgive me, the

smoked meat! It's cold but fresh. I, when I buy meat, 1 don't buy just any old meat. Why don't

you have a pickle? It's an etrog, not a pickle. My wife, may she live long, before I leave home,

when she starts to pack, she packs and packs and packs and packs . . . Take, I beg you, a glass of cherry brandy. It's our own cherry brandy, my wife's specialty.

Lanternshooter {Drinks] A loyal wife you have.

Menakhem-Mendel {Drinks] You have a loyal wife.

Bakingfish A rarity. One in a whole Guberniia! What do you know?

Texts and Documents 1 67 —

Lancernshoocer It's not a wife, vo/is comprenez, but some treasure!

Menakhem-Mendel A treasure, not a wife!

Bakingfish What do you know? What do you know?

Lanternshooter [To himself} Stepped on the right spot. ... It looks like it'll go the right way. . . . [Aloi/d'] Such a wife, you must appreciate.

Menakhem-Mendel {To himself] He takes him in the right way. . . . {Alo/ui} Such a wife, you have to respect, such a wife!

Bakingfish {Peels an orange] What do you know? What do you know? Take, I beg you, a piece of orange.

Good oranges. I, when I go to buy oranges, I don't buy just any old oranges. This too she packed

for me, my wile, I mean . . .

Lanternshooter {Peels an orange] A wife like yours, you must not leave just like that, with no protection, God forbid, for the case of the worst case, in case. Heaven torfend, of a catastrophe. Vans comprenez? My

way of doing it, that, en principe, a wife must be protected, let alone children, and let alone people

like us, voi/s comprenez, road-people. . . .

Menakliem-Mendel {To himself ] Nor bad, not bad, on my word! {Aloud] We are, after all, road-people, aren't we!

Bakingfish My way of doing it too, that a wife you must protect, insure at least with a capital of some ten

thousand rubles. There is only one recipe for that.

Lanternshooter {Excited] To indemnify yourself''

Menakhem-Mendel {Excited] To condemnify yourself from death?

Bakingfish How did you guess what I mean? You took the words right out of my mouth!

Lanternshooter Good sense. For how else could people like us, vous comprenez, protect our wives?

Menakhem-Mendel Simple good sense!

Bakingfish Absolutely right. If you can pay a little at a time, and it doesn't cost much . . . Which one of you would like to make a deal?

Lanternshooter {Grabs his briefcase] Me, naturally. {Looks down at Menakhem-Mendel]

Menakhem-Mendel {Grabs his briefcase] Naturally, me.

Bakingfish You mean, both of you? My pleasure, even better. {Bends down for his briefcase] About a doctor,

I think, there won't be any problem.

Lanternshooter From a doctor, we can bring an affadavit later. The main thing is the years.

Menakhem-Mendel A paper from a doctor you can furnish later. How old are you — this is the main thing.

Bakingfish Me?

Lanternshooter Who else?

Menakhem-Mendel Who else, me?

Bakingfish What do you mean? Didn't you want me to in

Lanternshooter You should us? We thought you!

Menakhem-Mendel You, we thought!

Bakingfish You? Me? Are you age— ?

Lanternshooter Of course, agents! And you?

Menakhem-Mendel Agents, naturally! And you, who are you?

1 68 Texts and Dm/imanti Bakingfish {Stands off, dusts off the food. Stretches out his hand'] I have the honor to introduce myself: Akim Isaakovich Bakingfish, Inspector-Organizer of "New York."

Lanternshooter Really? Our brother's keeper! Mark Moyseyevich Lanternshooter, Agent Acquereur Regional of

"Equitable. " {Looks down at Menakhem-Mendel]

Menakhem-Mendel Are you really, indeed, one of us?! {Elegantly] Menakhem-Mendel Yakenhoz, Sup-agent of "Yakir."

Scene 4 {Turtledove enters the train with his clan, lots of suitcases, packages, and baskets covered with shawls. Looks for a place for himself and his family]

Turtledove Est-ce que je peux entrer?

Bakingfish Je vo/is en prie.

Lanternshooter Enchante.

Menakhem-Mendel Dans chante. {The new character sits down ivith his wife and children and they begin spreading their packages around. Commotion, tumult. One screams ''Dinner! Mama, dinner!" Another wants a drink. The

mother cracks nuts, and puts them into the little child's mouth; she holds another baby at her breast. The

older ones push to the window, elbow each other aside. The father honors them — 07ie with a slap, one with a poke, one with a smack on the back]

Bakingfish {To himself ] Such a head of a family surely would need to be insured. {Aloud] No good with children on the road?

Lanternshooter {To himself] Un convenable subject to indemnify himself with the children! {Aloud] On the road with children must, Lm sure, be hard?

Menakhem-Mendel {To himself] Maybe this character would condemnify himself from death, maybe? {Aloud] It's hard, I'm sure, with children on the road?

Turtledove As hard as death.

Bakingfish They're jittery, your kids, aren't they?

Lanternshooter You spoil them?

Menakhem-Mendel Are they spoiled, your kids?

Turtledove {Pokes the oldest to move him away from the window] Not so jittery as dear.

Bakingfish Fine children you have.

Lanternshooter No evil eye turned out good, vous comprenez?

Menakhem-Mendel Turned out good, no evil eye.

Turtledove Not bad. Learn very well. Well bred. Breeding is the main thing. {Calls the oldest one] Abrasha, come here! Give the uncle a hand. N/{, Abrasha! {Abrasha doesn't want to come and gets a slap from

father] You see this brat?' {Points to the second one] "What a head! A genius, I'm telling you! But a

hooligan! Oy, a hooligan! You argue with him, he'll mix you with mud. . . . And that snot-nosed boy, you see? — A sage! Listens to his mother like a tomcat. But tor me they have some respect.

That is, they wouldn't listen to me either, but I have a whip and I lash, oy do I lash! Children,

you hear, have to be taught, educated. Education is the main thing. You see this little squirrel, whose mother feeds him nuts? A big mouth! Not yet four years old and talks every word, every word like an old man. Davidke! Come here, Davidke! {The little squirrel called Davidke doesn't want to get out of his mother's arms, turns his head to father] Tell me, Davidke, what's your name? {Davidke

answers "Tye. tye. tye."] How old are you, Davidke? {Davidke answers "Tye, tye, tye."] Davidke! Ask

your mother to give you jam. [ Daiidke turns his head to his mother: "Tye. tye. tye!] What do you say to that? Every word, every word, like an old man!

Bakingfish {Enthusing] For such children, you got to have a lot.

Lanternshooter For them, vous comprenez, you got to gird your loins.

Texts and Documents 1 69 Menakhem-Mendel Gird your loins, you got to.

Turtledove What's to be amazed! You see my gray hair? [Points to his beard] Not yet fifteen years after the wedding.

Bakingfish [Shakes his head} Ay-yay-yay!

Lanternshooter No evil eye, such a company!

Menakhem-Mendel Such a company, no evil eye!

Turtledove To nourish, clothe, shoe, teach, educate! Education is the main thing. That is, Lm not

complaining, God forbid. Thank God I have a fine job, I work out my lew thousand rubles with

these ten fingers. [Shows them his fingers} But as I take a look at my tribe, no evil eye, and it occurs

to me, if. Heaven forfend, may God watch over, the hour should never come. . . . You

understand? As long as the head serves, and the hands work. . . . You understand?

Bakingfish Oh! We understand very well. We are also family men. We know the taste of raising children.

Lanternshooter To protect children is, vo/is coinprenez, one of the big thhigs!

Menakhem-Mendel A big thing to protect children, to protect!

Turtledove I argue it all the time with my wife, and with everybody separately, wherever I come, 1 argue the

same: What would people like us have done, middle-class people, if there were no means to —

Bakingfish [Takes the words out of his ino/ith] To insure yourself?

Lanternshooter To indemnify yourself, ^w/r le cas de mort}

Menakhem-Mendel To condemnify yourself from death?

Turtledove [Excited] I see on your face that you all understand it very well, and that you are all ready to

make a deal? So I can only congratulate you — you're doing a good thing.

Bakingfish [Very agitated] We do what our duty tells us to do.

Lanternshooter What our conscience dictates, i'o//s coiiiprenez.

Menakhem-Mendel We are doing the just thing, we are.

Turtledove May God help you, as you wish it for yourself, may you have long days and years, may God give you pleasure as you have given me pleasure, along with my wife and children; they, poor things,

are looking for this, for I am their only breadwinner. [Pitlls out a briefcase] How much do you want to make? For instance, what kind of a sum, that is?

Bakingfish [Busies himself with his briefcase] How can we know what kind of a sum?

Lanternshooter [Busies himself with his briefcase] Can we, vous comprenez, give you any advice?

Menakhem-Mendel What do you mean, we should give you advice, we?

Turtledove [Atnazed] What do you mean, you me? It's I want you —

Bakingfish [Beside himself] You want to make the spiel to us ?

Lanternshooter You want to indemnify us, en cas de mort}

Menakhem-Mendel You want to condemnify us from death? You^

Turtledove What else? You — we? Are you agents too?

Bakingfish Ha-ha-ha! Of course, agents. And how about you?

Lanternshooter Agents, vous comprenez. And who are you?

Menakhem-Mendel Agents, you bet! And you?

1 70 Texts and Documents Turtledove [Elegantly'] Lazar Konstantinovich Turtledove, Inspector General and Agent Organizer of "Urban."

Bakingfish [Elegant/]] Akim Isiuikovich Bakingfish, Inspector-Organizer of "New York."

Lanternshooter Mark Moyseyevich Lanternshooter, Agent Acquereur Regional of "Equitable. ' [Looks down at

Menakhem-Mendel ]

Menakhem-Mendel [Elegantly] And 1 am Menakhem-Mendel Yakenhoz, am I, sup-agent of "Yakir." [All four shake

hands and exchange cards. Only Menakhem-Mendel pats all his pockets ] Oh dear! I haven't got any

cards yet, I haven't!

Turtledove [Sighs] A hard way to make a living. Eh?

Bakingtish [Sighs] Like crossing the Red Sea! You travel, you snitf, you think — maybe?

Lanternshooter [Looks down at Menakhem-Mendel] Voiis comprenez? Maybe it would not have been so bad if there

weren't so many agents. Woiis comprenez, competition . . .

Menakhem-Mendel What do I need competition-shmompetition? Say it in simple Yiddish: You lay in the ground and bake bagels.

CURTAIN

I. Yakenhoz: a mnemonic device ro remember the order of the blessings said at the Kiddush ot a holiday that falls at

the end of the Sabbath. In Yiddish, Yakenhoz sounds like a funny name, and may suggest a kind of rabbit. In his

introduction to the comedy Yakenhoz, or the Great Stock Market Game, Sholem Aleichem wrote, "Y. K. N. H. Z.

[Yakenhoz] has five letters, the initials of five words: Yayin, Kiddush, Ner, Havdoleh, Zman [wine, blessing, candle,

separation, time] — the five signs of a Jewish holiday. The word itself has no meaning. It is something, yet nothing;

nothing to hold on to. He who knows the trade of stocks, papers, rates, etc., on the stock market will understand at

once the taste of Yakenhoz; and he who is far from that business will digest it only after reading the whole work to the end."

Texts and Documents 171 Essays, Speeches, and Letters by Chagall

With the exception of Chagall's letter to the managenmit ofGOSEKT. u'hich was written in Russian, the works in this section are translated from the Yiddish.

1 72 Texts and Documents To the Management of GOSEKT Leaves From My Notebook

This Utter, ni R//SMciii. /s iii the State Bakhritshni M/ise/iiii. Moscow. Originally p/tblishecl III '>,\\ivom, Moscon'. no. i ( Ip22).

When I finished my work, I assumed, as was promised, that it A few words, comrades, on the topic you asked me to write would be exhibited pubHciy like many of my most recent about at length — my opinion on Jewish art. works. Just recently in Jewish artists' circles a hot debate went on

The management will agree that, as an artist, I cannot rest about the so-called Jewish art. until the "masses" see it, etc. In the noise and fever, a group of Jewish artists emerged. Instead, the works appear to have been placed in a cage and Among them was Marc Chagall. can be seen, crowded (though happily so), by at most a Still in Vitebsk when this misfortune happened — just hundred Jews. I love Jews very much (there is plenty of returned from Paris — I smiled to myself. evidence for this), but I also love Russians and various other I was busy then with something else. peoples and am used to painting serious work for many On the one hand, Jews of the "new world" — that world so nationalities. hated by Litvakov — my shtetl alleys, hunchbacked, herringy Hence, my demand and appeal to the theater are natural residents, green Jews, uncles, aunts, with their questions, and legitimate; I am asking you to put at my disposal twenty- "Thank God, you grew up, got big!" eight hours in the course of two weeks — two hours a day — And I kept painting them. . . . for the organization of an exhibition and survey of my works On the other hand, I was younger then by a hundred years,

for all interested parties. The expenses for the organization of and I loved them, simply loved them. . . . the exhibition, such as posters, etc., will be borne by IZO I was more absorbed by this, this gripped me more than the

NKP [Art Division, People's Commissariat of Enlightenment} thought that I was anointed as a Jewish artist. or by me. I cannot give up this demand. Once, in Paris, back in my LaRuche room, where I worked,

Expecting an official answer, I heard through the Spanish screen the quarrel of two Jewish

emigre voices, "So what do you think, after all, Antokolsky Marc Chagall wasn't a Jewish artist, nor Israels, nor Liebermann!"

12/2/21 The lamp was dim and lit my painting standing upside

down (that's how I work — now are you happy?!) and finally,

when the Paris sky began to dawn, I laughed at the idle

thoughts of my neighbors about the lot of Jewish art, "O. K.,

you talk — and I will work." Representatives of all countries and nations! — To you —

my appeal. (I cannot, I remembered Spengler.) Confess: Now,

when Lenin sits in the Kremlin, there is no sliver of wood,

smoke rises, the wife is angry — do you now have "national art?" You, clever German Walden, and you, various others who preach international art, fine Frenchmen, Metzinger and

Gleizes (if they're still alive), you will answer me, "Chagall,

" you're right!

Jews, if they feel like it (I do), may cry that the painters of

the shtetl wooden synagogues (why am I not with you in one grave?) and the whittlers of the wooden synagogue clappers —

"Hush!" (I saw it in An-ski's collection, got scared) — are gone.

But what is really the difference between my crippled Mohilev great-grandfather Segal who painted the Mohilev synagogue, and me, who painted the Yiddish theater (a good theater) in Moscow? Believe me, no fewer lice visited us as we wallowed on the floor and in workshops, in synagogues and in the theater.

Furthermore, I am sure that, if I stopped shaving, I would

see his precise portrait. . . . By the way, my father.

Believe me, I put in cjuite a bit of effort; no less love (and what love!) have we both expended.

The difference is only that he took orders for signs and I studied in Paris, about which he also heard something.

And yet. Both I and he and others (there are such) are not yet Jewish art as a whole.

Why not speak the truth? Where would it come from? God

forbid it should have to come from some fiat! From Efros writing an article, or because Levitan will give me an

"academic ration!" . . . There was Japanese art, Egyptian, Persian, Greek. Beginning with the Renaissance, national arts began to decline. Boundaries are blurred. Artists come — individuals,

Texts and Documents 1 73 citizens of this or that state, born here or there (blessed be my Hov/ i Got to Know Peretz Vitebsk) — and one would need a good registration or even a Ong/iiitlly p//hlishecl ni Literanshc bleter, Warsaw, nos. 49—50

passport specialist (for the Jewish desk) to be able to (1925). Reprhitec/ //I Di goldene keyt. Tel Aviv. no. 6o(ip6y).

"nationalize" all the artists.

Yet it seems to me: You asked me, dear colleagues, to write for the Peretz issue.

If I were not a Jew (with the content I put mto that word), You probably think it is enough to love something in order to

I wouldn't have been an artist, or I would be a different artist be able to write about it — to write about Peretz. But is he altogether. who loves a critic?

Is that news? Besides, I note with fear that 1 have recently lost, it seems

For myself I know quite well what this little nation can to me, the talent for writing. . . . The pen betrays me. . . .

achieve. I didn't even know Peretz personally. Only when a

Unfortunately, I am too modest and cannot say aloud what publisher (I don't remember which) asked me to do drawings

it can achieve. for one of Peretz's tales, "The Magician," did I start reading

It's no small matter what this little nation has achieved! Peretz. I was surprised. You can certainly remember the

When it wanted — it showed Christ and Christianity. impression when you walk in the street and turn into another

When it wished — it gave Marx and Socialism. street and, at that very corner, behind a fence, a Jewish moon

Can it be that it won't show the world some art? with a dark horizon behind it suddenly leaps at your feet from

It will! the sky.

Kill me if not. Just like that did poor and splendid Jewish images and

figures float up from the little white pages. It is simple and

new. It is that modest, hardly underlined noble technique, those already lived-out means that alone can make art national, independent of content. And really, from childhood on, haven't they dangled anxiously inside us — those notes, Sabbath days, Friday evenings, velvet caps, girls of your first love, landscapes breathing with psalms, the last tones of the weary cantor, and Jews, Jews on the earth and in the sky?

I recall my strolls along the street on the riverbank. Past the

sawmill and factory, far, far beyond the other side of the bridge — there, you stop at a tree next to the graveyard. Peretz murmured to my feet from below. Swam in the clouds above. Rustled among the little houses — the tombstones of the cemetery, where pieces and crumbs of his folklore stories were heaped up — various scraps of paper covered with writing. Wasn't the forsaken, mountainous and half-alive place good for the stage of his play, A Night in the Old Market'!

I will not calm down until the collection of his folklore

tales is illustrated by me. A dream!

I am sorry, dear colleagues, that on the day of the Yortseyt, I cannot be in a corner in a synagogue somewhere — where Jews will remember Peretz. In such moments our lives and our

works pass before our eyes. . . . And years unknown are still there for us. And you think: our epoch may be one of iron and cruelty, yet we have now rediscovered Peretz and Sholem Aleichem. They were first to lay their hands on you and bless you — the new generations of Jewish poets and writers.

1 74 Texts and DncNtiients Letters to YIVO On a Jewish Art Museum dying of starvation, I was even more upset. But — no!

YIVO. the Jewish Scientific liistit/ite. ivas founded in Vihia in 192$. Let everyone help build our true Jewish art, our Jewish

For its Conference in 1929, Chagall wrote a letter initiating the museum foundation, our science of art, our strength! Let your creation of aJewish Art Museum. The museum, supportedfinancially journal serve those goals successully. by the Berlin psychoanalyst Eitingon, was officially opened by the eminent historian Professor S. Dubnov, on the tenth anniversary of Paris, October 1936 YIVO, August 18, ip^^. Jacob Sher, who greeted the delegates on behalf of the Vilna Jewish artists, remarked, "It is the greatest Marc Chagall celebration for the youngJewish artists to see Chagall. Chagall is the dream of every young artist. The Vilna artists have lived to see Chagall with their own eyes and to hear him speak in the international language, the Esperanto, calledJewish art. " Chagall delivered the opening address. The following letters were published in Journal for Jewish Art, Vilna (YIVO). no. I (Nov. -Dec. 1936).

Allow me to say a tew words about the Jewish Scientific Institute. We Jews, scattered over the whole world, badly need cultural institutions to unite us. You absolutely must not postpone the organization of a Section for Art. It is as necessary as the whole Institute.

I admit, for quite some time a bitterness has been building up in me, since, even in the better Jewish circles, there is no discussion of the need to create a Jewish art museum. Few among us are aware of how important it is, and not just politically. The centers for collecting for the museum will be

Vilna, Berlin, New York. I know it would have been easy to establish in Paris, for example, a society of "Friends of a Jewish

Museum Foundation" with branches in all other cities. But I also know the fate of such societies dealing with the issues of Jewish art. The Jewish Scientific Institute, since it stands on its own two feet, and wants to take care of it, must do so as soon as possible.

You will tell me, "Be our guest, come work, help." Thus far, I haven't refused. If I had two lives, I would have given one to the Jews. But our art is a terrible art, it demands all of your soul, your entire devotion. You will say, and the means.'' The means, as always, must be given by the Jewish government, that is, by the Jewish people as a whole. While we are wasting enormous sums on, I admit, important but temporary needs, we must especially find money for such a goal. We Jews have often been accused of not being capable of art. Now we could show the world what we really possess. But we possess absolutely no connoisseurs of the visual arts, while we do have many specialists in Yiddish literature. Hence, the Institute should set up courses to study the problems of art in general and of Jewish art in particular.

This is more or less what I wanted to tell you. It may seem like an illusion, but illusions are often important and vital. I greet YIVO warmly and wish it success.

Your devoted.

Marc Chagall

Dear Dr. Schneid:

On the publication of the first issue oi the Journal forJewish Art

by the Museum at YIVO, I send you my best wishes.

I have thought a lot about it.

Humanity today is far from both art and humanity. And I have often thought that my erstwhile talks and plans about a museum and about art are perhaps off the mark.

And after my trip to Poland, when I saw the Jews almost

Texts and Documenti I 1 75 .

Speech at the World Conference of the Jewish Scientific time, between Gogol' and Alexandr Ivanov, Tolstoi and the

Institute, YIVO "Itinerants, " Chekhov and Levitan, or in our literature, Peretz Originally published in World Conference of the Jewish Scientific and his fine sensibility for the modernism of his time — we Institute: On the Tenth Anniversary of YIVO. Vilna: YIWO. ip^d will surely find that this connection filled their literary

Reprinted in Di goldene keyt. no. 6o (l^Sy). creation with an intensive plastic actuality, with a new source of richness, with a great freshness. And therefore their

Actually, you might think I am out of place here. For I am an language is not ethnographic, but tmiversal in a pure artistic

artist and you are scientists. But I am here exactly as you are, sense. But this is a different problem, much more important for we share the same weakness, the same pasiion: Jews than one might think, and perhaps also a scientific problem, so

And precisely now, in this terrible and ridiculous time, in I hand it to the proper address, to you, scientists.

the time of contemporary fashionable anti-Semitism, I would Simply, we new Jews who, thousands of years ago, created

like to emphasize once more that I am a Jew. And by this very the Bible, the work of the Prophets, the basis of all religions of

fact, I am even more international in spirit — not like the all peoples, we also want to create great art that will resound in model of the professional revolutionaries who contemptuously the world.

shake off their Jewishness. But I am not amazed at the feeling toward us on the part of

There are several reasons why I am here. I have known these strangers or enemies. No, what amazes me is the relationship of little huts and fences around you by heart for a long time. But all layers ot Jewish society to its own artists, their treatment of

your house, the house of the Institute, though it seems to be as the artists as second-class political activists, who don't deserve

poor as a hut in one of my paintings, is nevertheless as rich as even parr of that respect we grant artists of the pen or the

Solomon's Temple. So I greet it and I greet you who created it. theater, who often have to be grateful to the visual artists

I am filled with a special, bitter joy, by the thought that themselves. I am not talking just about the fact that Jews don't

without means, with no state support, with only enthusiasm buy paintings, don't support the artists, though this is also

and love, you built a house with your own hands. In the future, important in today's time of crisis. What is important is the

in the period of our ascendance, this house will serve as a attention, the interest. And if this appears sometimes, it is model of stubborn Jewish devotion to the idea of culture. directed to the least talented and most tasteless "kitsch."

There is also a personal reason why I came here. A few Indeed, the reasons for that situation are well known. The

kilometers from you, there is a land, actually just one city, Torah, which gave us the Ten Commandments, snuck in an

which I haven't seen in a long time, and which won't let go of eleventh commandment too: "Thou shalt not make unto thee

me. I used your invitation and came to meander here a while. any graven image."

I admit that the older I get, the lazier I get, and I don't move Our monotheism was dearly bought — and, because of if I'm not called. that, Judaism had to give up observation ot nature with our

I don't know why, but between me and my homeland there eyes, and not just with our soul. On religious grounds, Judaism

IS a one-sided affair, and nevertheless, such a land of genius, struggled with ancient idolatry, whose remnants are displayed

with such a revolution of genius, might have sensed what today in all museums ot the world, so that it remained with no occurs in the heart of one of their own, and not just listened to share in the treasures of graphic art. We left nothing behind us and believed in the words and declarations ot the confession in the world's museums except for Torah Scrolls and the

letters. . . . abandoned synagogues that are no longer attended.

But the major reason for my coming here is to remind again But we, the new Jews, have revolted against this, we no not just you Vilna Jews (because you do do something in this longer want to recognize such a state of affairs, we want to be

respect), but the Jews of the whole world, that a Jewish not just the People of the Book, but also a people of art. This is

Scientific Institute is indeed beautiful — but that a Jewish Art the source of the birth pangs of our art, this is why its infancy

Museum is just as beautiful and just as important. is so sad. All this requires good organization and good will: to

Indeed, since the end of the nineteenth century and the collect art among Jews and everything that is related to the beginning of the twentieth, Jews have strained at their fetters history of art, to promote art not as a thing outside us, but as

and stormed into the world with their art; and it seems to me part of our internal life, and to encourage our artists.

that this cultural contribution is the most important Jewish Collecting paintings must not be only a matter ot the contribution of recent times. But most people have barely artists' philanthropy. Keep in mind that even canvases and

heard about it. The masses and the intelligentsia don't see it; paints cost the artist more than a pen and paper for the writer;

everything is splintered, not concentrated, and I even feel but no one would think of asking for a writer's manuscript —

awkward talking about it because I am myself an interested whether valuable or not — tor nothing. At a time when we party. seem to complain everywhere that we have no advocates in the But what can you do? We Jews don't have otir own world, which persecutes us so much, and we dream of a Baudelaire, Theophile Gauthier, ApoUinaire, who powerfully congress where disbarred lawyers will appear, we forget that we forged the artistic taste and the artistic concepts of their time. have in our hands an immense shield; our cultural treasures

Can we help it? In our Jewish society, we don't have a must speak for us, must plead our case and defend us. The

Diaghilev, a Morozov, a Shchukin, who collected and organized Scientific Institute is a valuable treasure, but we must also the art culture with such ardor and understanding. create an art institute, national art foundations, which will And the fact that the intelligentsia in general, and Yiddish continue to nourish and build museums in the centers of

writers in particular, lack interest in the plastic arts indicates Jewish life. You may say that this is an illusion, but the

that art is alien and superfluous in their lives and work, and illusory and fantastic, as we often discover, are the most real. A

the world rests on literature alone. proof is the YIVO. For the first conference of YIVO, six years

It Yiddish poetry, Yiddish literature, were intertwined with ago, I wrote to you about creating a museum at the YIVO. I

other branches of art in general, and with visual art in know how difficult it is. But better difficult than hurried, as

particular, it would have been richer, it would have they did in Eretz Israel, where, despite my warnings, they

strengthened its upward thrust, both in spirit and in style. brought together anything they could, and the leadership went If we take, for example, Russian literature — the to inexperienced and not-very-artistic hands. The new Jewish connection between Pushkin and the pseudoclassicists of his people does not need a repetition of the Bezalels.

1 76 Texts and Doiiniienis We don't need to reach the goal right away. There is a The Artist and the Poet whole series of preparatory stages, moral and material: Speech deltvered in New York on April 50, 1944. on the publication of propagating the idea, training art historians and museum Itsik Fefer's book, To Start Anew f Oyfsnay/, which Chagall specialists, staging exhibitions in public institutions, workers' illustrated. Fefer, a Soviet Yiddish poet, visited the United States with clubs, schools; organizing excursions to the European centers, Mikhoels in September 194^. The manuscript is in the YWO archives to the great international exhibitions; instructing teachers, (Neu' York City). pupils, students in teachers' colleges and universities in understanding art; fostering their knowledge of art as you Thank you for your invitation to be with you at this assembly. foster their taste in literature; publishing books and journals I am just an artist struggling with himself and his art. 'What about art. For Jewish taste is horrible, backward; and their can I say, I who want to hear? Perhaps the folk proverb is right, confidence in their own judgment is even greater. Young (and that silence is golden and the word is silver. not so young) people, who travel to the great centers to study But today it must be different. Keeping silent is not law, medicine, and other professions that often don't c]uite feed golden, and there are words that say nothing. For an artist, it is the body, might have thought a bit about art culture, about art not enough today to live with nature, with himself He must that at least nourishes our spirit. also live with and feel the people.

I close with the feeling that all I have said, and all I have Today my people are those who let their life's road be not said, should have been said at a conference of writers and illuminated by the young rays that emanate from our great artists. But artists as a social element practically don't exist; homeland. artists can hardly talk to each other. Therefore, others, all of My people are those who strive toward the unity of all its you here, have to look at us actively from the side, organize parts. sensibly, tactfully, and with an internal empathy. And, like many of you, I want the realization of a just

For a long time, I have wanted to say these few words about Jewish home for millions of Jews in Eretz Israel, which must our role, about your role, about the role of all of us, not just be dear to everyone. artists, but scientists, and all Jews for the good of all humanity. Those are the three points without which a Jew is today

In these days of crisis, not just a material but also a spiritual only half a man and only half a Jew. The more I strive toward crisis, when world crises, wars, revolutions flare up over a piece them simultaneously — the fuller is my personality as a Jew of bread, and the Jews truly don't have the wherewithal or the and as a artist. where to live, there is still no sweeter mission than suffering With those three points, we bring our Jewish face to the and working for our goal, for our spirit, which lives in our ideal that is possible today. The splintering of the Jewish Bible, which lives in our dreams about art, which can help people has long led to its deformation and unhappiness. What bring the Jews to the true and right path, to achieve while Paris once was for those who sought art — I admire my great other nations just spill blood — their own and that of others. homeland for its achievements and ambitions. It saves the world. Jewish America should have become the great

August 14, 1935 movement of Jewish unity. Three Jewish worlds need each other. Together they must create the strength of Jewish creativity and culture; together the Jewish people will become whole, morally and physically.

Unity is our new Hasidism.

I come to greet you as a simple Jew from the people. My father was from the people, a worker. In his shul, he was for "unity"; when he heard the word Jerusalem, he cried. My

father is my best academy. A few days ago, the war in Europe ended. The Jewish people who remain rise emaciated, pale. They look around: what remains of the people? What remains are their pain and scattered sacks of their

limbs. I don't know if they will count our lost Jewish people's armies. If only Moses were here, he would have presented a

bill.

I want to hope that "on the waters of another river" a new child will be found — a Moses who will heal the Jewish people both from satiation and hunger, will straighten the twisted ways, and twist the straight ones a bit. He will put us on our feet so we will become a people of dawn and not of sunset.

Now is the time. No world conferences can be successful until the Jewish people are taken down from the cross on which they have been crucified for two thousand years. The world must do justice to itself Temporary luck and

wealth is not enough — a state, a land, also has a consciousness, a soul, like an individual person. The Jewish people emerged from the war like a capsized ship at sea. We look in the water — torn legs and souls are floating, torn Torah scrolls disintegrate like bright, childish intestines. From the abyss you hear no divine or prophetic voices. And as always the sun burns above and colors us and everybody with the color of red blood.

Texts and Documents 1 77 The war is over. But may peace not be like that painting To the Paris Artists that has everything except a soul. The typed nianiisiript is the 17 VO archives (New York City).

I greet the Jewish folk masses. I always wanted to feel like

one of them, to fill myself with the people's breath, as once I send my word to you, my fellow painters of the Salon of

upon a time in my home. It is good to come to the people, as a Liberation. man who knocks at the door at night. Let us just not think Thirty-five years ago, as a very young man, like thousands

that the door is like a wall. To go to the people . . . find in of others, I came to Paris to fall in love with France and study them a salvation from yourself, a way to a lost world. French art.

I wish you and your chilciren to seek not only a piece of In recent years I have ielt unhappy that I couldn't be with bread, but primarily to strive to reach the source of Jewish and you, my friends. My enemy forced me to take the road of exile.

human culture, and thus we will attain general human value in On that tragic road, I lost my wife, the companion of my

our own eyes and in the eyes of others. life, the woman who was my inspiration. I want to say to my friends in France that she joins me in this greeting, she who loved France and French art so faithfully. Her last joy was the liberation of Paris. In the course of these years, the world was anxious about

the fate of French civilization, of French art. Tlie absence of France seemed impossible, incomprehensible. Today the world hopes and believes that the years of struggle will make the content and spirit of French art even more profound. The world hopes and believes that the art of France will, more than ever, be worthy of the great art epochs of the past.

I bow to the memory of those who disappeared, and of those

who fell in the battle.

I greet you, Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard. I greet you, Raoul

Dufy. I greet you, the old and the young, who all fought with so much courage.

I would also like to greet my friends, the French writers who are so worthy to bear that name, Jean Paulhan, Jean Cassou, Andre Malraux, Paul Eluard, and so many others.

I bow to your struggle, to your fight against the foe of art

and life.

Now, when Paris is liberated, when the art of France is

resurrected, the whole world too will, once and for all, be free of the Satanic enemies who wanted to annihilate not just the

body but also the soul — the soul, without which there is no

life, no artistic creativity. Dear friends, we are grateful to the destiny that kept you alive and allowed the light of your colors and your works to illuminate the sky darkened by the enemy. May your colors and your creative effort have the strength

to bring back warmth and new belief in life, in the true life of France and of the whole world.

October 14, 1944

1 78 Texts and Documents To the Je>vish People in Paris A. Sutzkever — Poet and Symbol

Originally piiblnhad in Naye Prese. Paris. Junt l^, 1946. Reprinted Speech at a celebration in Pans honoring the Yiddish poet and in Di goldene keyt, no. 60 ( ipdy). partisan A. Sutzkever.

From one soul to the other, from year to year, from country to I am happy to be among Jews and greet my friend and poet

country. . . . Sutzkever, who is not only a great poet, but also a symbol of

I am back here again, where I spent my youth in art. that tragic and heroic time when our people still lived in their You, along with other peoples, brought me here. old homes. He was among those who, in the locked-up

Here is my beautiful and melancholy city. I still saw little ghettoes, fevered and fought our enemy. His young eyes saw of you. Just a few eyes, a few weary faces. that reality which we didn't know in our youth. Therefore, his

I saw how similar you are to me, to my art, but through poems, no matter with what color they are painted or what your eyes I saw more — I saw the gun that liberated us, but they sing about, often take on that tragic tone of our yesterday. also the smoke of the burning ovens, the forests and the While we dreamed once upon a time about such fantastic, villages where you hid and fought, and the heroism that is the sweet fires and broken khupa houses, he saw ugly man in his greatest in our history. physical and spiritual mire.

It seems to me that you are standing before me, Therefore, I feel a kind of obligation to Sutzkever and his impoverished and naked, in tatters. friends the other heroes. Moreover, Sutzkever the poet is also But be calm, this reminds me of those paintings by often close to me. Pieces of his young poetry remind me of

Rembrandt, where naked and barely covered figures appear, pieces of my Vitebsk streets, when I walked over them, over

and are therefore as pure as gold. . . . the roofs and chimneys, believing that, outside of me, no one

We lived to see that our life is like the torn tatters on those lived in the city, that all the girls were waiting for me, that paintings of genius, but our spirit still shines. from the graves in the cemetery, the dead were listening to me,

Only one woe: We lost our dear ones. Our house is empty, that the clouds and the moon turned with me into another even when we are in it. street.

We are crying and cannot cry them out enough. We are But there is no more Vitebsk nor Vilna, and together with seeking them up above in the clouds. We are seeking them them, the Yiddish language has shuddered, and what not? down below in the corners. We are seeking them in Only a distant sound remains, such an unclear taste on the tip

ourselves. . . . of your tongue.

We touch ourselves and push ourselves away. It is only Sometimes the familiar tombstone with its torn Torah us — without them. Scrolls appears from afar — the thin Yiddish poet and painter We are desolate, not just because we are missing our near who writes and paints. For whom, for what? ones, but because many "near ones" here and there look like But if Sutzkever saw the face of that last day, in a happy

strangers. . . . day he started a new day. He hovered over to the land of the

We are amazed that the more we break through to light — Jewish natural dream, to the biblical land. He lives in Israel. I the deeper we see the "shadow." cannot help but recall here my old friend the national poet But where was the real "foe?" The barbarian who Bialik, walking around the streets of Tel Aviv like a prophet accidentally has a human face, who destroys a child and a and suddenly, quietly, on the side, asking my little daughter woman and robs in broad daylight, cannot be called "foe." He and my wife (apparently, he thought women were closer to could not present to us any important philosophical or moral God . . . ) to pray for him to be able to write poems — he had proof — against our philosophy and morals. in mind the city of Odessa, where he had previously created his

We won. monumental poems. . . .

In my personal life, I want to see some consolation in that: My dear friends, you feel that the time has come for us Jews that we will remain what we were before. We don't want to to be born again. We are not a people that dies. And may your flee from the depths of our culture and belief, for through them art attain even more the new shine we have recently seen on the lies the road to the world. faces of the "sabras" born in our land.

And we still want to create our form and content. May you find the harmony of yesterday and today. I know it

And it seems to me that out of the fire, breaking the is difficult to find such a balm to heal and renew our body and boundaries of factionalism, Jews will find a language of unity. soul. Perhaps this is a good means: to let your own diamond shine and illuminate freely, if you have one, let the colors sink freely inside you if you are born with them. And the form of a

world will follow us like a shadow, but the shadow is not a

shadow, it is the Jew in us. It becomes ever clearer that the freer we are, the more Jews we are; and the more Jew — the more man we become. We are stronger now, though smaller in number, and may

our enemies understand little by little that it is superfluous

and dangerous to touch us. For our strength is our internal truth, a truth like the purest hue of a painting, as freedom

itself.

Art, poetry, is built on such a fiery base. It envelops the man and the people. May you so Jewishly stream into our people as into a river, a river that flows into the sea of the world.

1955

Texts and Documents \ 179 Summary Translation of Chagall's Letter to A Word at the Celebration in Jerusalem

President Weitzman Published in Di goldene keyt. no. 60 ( 196/). This s/iiinuayy. in English, was discovered among Chagall's

correspondence in the YIVO archives (New York City). It is reprinted How did the air and earth of Vitebsk, my hometown, along

with only minor spelling corrections. The original is not in the with thousands of years of Diaspora, blend with the air and Weitzman archives in Rehovot. earth of Jerusalem?

How could I have known that it was not only my hands and

... I write to you as our fathers in Russia used to write to their colors that would lead me in my work, but also the dear hands Rabbis for help in solving problems of conscience. of my father and mother, and of others and yet others, with

I have been asked to execute mural paintings in a 16th- their mute lips and closed eyes, who whispered behind me as if

century chapel in Vence, which is a historical, cultural, and they wanted to take part in my life?

religious center on the Riviera. I have not yet accepted. It seems to me that your tragic and heroic resistance

. . . Of course I shall be left entirely free to paint whatever I movements in the ghettos, and your war here, in this country,

wish and if I accept I intend to do Biblical scenes such as have merged with my flowers and animals and fire-colors. . . . appear in some of my paintings, strictly in my own manner Insofar as our age refuses to see the whole figure of the and from my own point of view, symbolizing the suffering of world and is content with a very small part of its skin, my

the martyred Jewish people. heart aches when I observe this figure in its eternal rhythm,

To decorate a chapel might give me the chance to do work and my will to go against the general stream is strengthened.

that is only possible on large walls, instead of having to limit It seems to me that the colors and the lines flow out, like

myself to relatively small canvases destined to hang in private tears from my eyes, though I am not crying. — And do not houses. To decorate walls in public buildings has long been my think I am talking here in a moment of weakness. On the

dream. If it were possible to decorate a synagogue my dream contrary, the more years I pile up, the more certain I am of

would be completely fulfilled. what I want and what I say.

If I decide to decorate this chapel I would not want the I know that my life's path is eternal and brief And I people of Israel to think that in my heart or mind — not to learned, back in my mother's womb, to walk that path more

speak of my art — I have anything in common with non- out of love than out of hatred.

Judaism. With my ancestors I shall always be bound to my The thoughts have nested in me tor many years, since the

people. time when my feet walked on the Holy Land, when I prepared

On a more temporal basis I do not know whether I should myself to create engravings of the Bible. They strengthened me

decorate a Catholic church at a time when the Vatican is not and encouraged me to bring my modest gift to the Jewish

favorably disposed to Israel. At the same time, I wonder if the people — that people that lived here thousands of years ago, presence of a Jewish painting in a church might be good among the other Semitic peoples.

propaganda for our people. And what is now called religious art I created when I

In other situations I have solved similar cases myself. I recalled also the great and ancient creations ot the surrounding refused my friend Jacques Maritain's request to donate a Semitic peoples.

picture to the Vatican's museum of modern art. I refused to I hope that, thereby, I stretch out my hand to the exhibit in German museums after the war, in spite of the neighboring peoples, their poets and artists, to whom human

official invitation of the French Cultural Services. An culture is dear. I saw the mountains of Sodom and the Negev, exhibition that has recently taken place in DiAsseldorf was and the shadows of our Prophets, in their garb the color of

organized without my consent and consisted of pictures from dried bread, shine from those mountains. I heard their ancient

German and Dutch collections. I refused to be present at the words. . . . opening of my exhibition in London at a time when British In their words they marked the path for behavior on the

policy was unfavorable to our interests. earth and pointed out the moral essence of our life.

But today I have neither the strength nor the capacity to I draw hope and courage from the thought that my modest

reply, and all the more because I have been asked to do work in work will remain on their-your land. other churches and in other towns. But with the renaissance, after 2,000 years, of the spiritual

and political center of the Jewish people, I cannot help turning

with ail my doubts toward its most eminent representative.

1 80 Texts and Documents Color, Which Is Love (A Word for America) paintings they hovered in the air. All this in the name of a

P/ihl!shi'cl 111 Di _i;oklc'nc kcyc ihk $() ( 1964). different perspective, a different construction of paintings, and a different formalism. My friend, Professor Neff, asked me to come to you, listen to And gradually our world appeared to us as a small world you, and say a few words to you. where we small people hover in the air, grasping onto the small

In truth, I would have preferred to listen to you, for all my elements of our nature, until the moment when, through very

life I have preferred to listen to what others say, to learn small elements of nature, we approached the atom itself

something from them, as far as I can. This so-called scientific control of nature — doesn't it limit

Not for the first time do I come to you, for it seems to me the source of poetry, doesn't it empty the soul? Doesn't it that the idea of your association deserves much interest. deprive man of calm, even of purely physical rest? Doesn't all

Rationally, I should have stayed at work in my atelier, for this deprive the organism of the moral concept of life and

this is the main goal of my life, when I am daring enough to creation.-' hope that I work not just for myself But it is good to think In recent years, I have often spoken about the chemistry, that people in our time come together to share their thoughts about authentic color, and about painterly matter as a about the main goals of life. barometer of authenticity. What can be more moving in our society, on this planet, A particularly sharp eye can see that authentic color and

than the striving to listen to the human heart, to hear in it the authentic matter contain in themselves every technical pulse of a world, the sighs and the dreams. possibility as well as moral and philosophical content.

For hundreds and thousands of years, it was morally easier If there is a moral crisis, there is also a crisis of color, of the for a man to live. He had this or that moral ground, deeply moral material, the blood, and of the elements of the word, of anchored in himself. His life and his creative activity were the sound, of all the components of art and life as well. deep and precise result of his world view. We see it clearly And even if you have mountains of color in a painting, if sealecf in the works of distant epochs of the past. you see something there or not, if there are lots of words and

Gradually, however, in the course of time, those old sounds — it still means that the work is also authentic. conceptions became powerless to inspire a living breath in In my opinion, the color and the matter of Cimabue itself people and fill them with an internal life, not only for their stimulated an upheaval in the art of the Byzantine period. In creativity but simply for their life. the same way, another color of Giotto, also absolutely authentic

I am not sad at all when I speak about it, and I'm not a — and I emphasize this word from a chemical point of view — pessimist. Forces do not exist that could influence me to stimulated a different moral and artistic upheaval. Just as later,

believe no longer in the human personality, for I believe in it was done by Masaccio and others. . . . general in the greatness of nature. But I also know that human I repeat: it is not the world view that is a literary or will and human behavior often result from cosmic influences of symbolic issue, that brings this change, but the blood itself, a that nature, just like the unfolding of history and human certain chemistry of nature, objects, and human concentration destiny. Yet we cannot refrain from always asking the same itself You can see the conception of this authenticity in all question: why are we so sad in recent years? domains.

The more boldly man liberates himself from his chains, the How was it born, how is it built up, this chemistry through more man feels alone, and among the masses he is left alone which art is created, the true conception of the world and of with his destiny. life:''

As always, however, I shall shift to art. It consists of elements of love and of a certain natural

With Impressionism, a window opened for us. A bright attitude, just as nature itself, which cannot stand evil, hatred,

rainbrow rose on the horizon of our world. And though this indifference. . . . world was different and more intensively colored, it seems to If, for example, we are seized to the quick by the soul of the me that, on the whole, it was narrower than the Naturalistic Bible, it is primarily because, even chemically, the Bible is the world of Courbet, for example. Just as the Naturalism of greatest work of art in the world, which includes the highest Courbet was, in his time, narrower than the world of life-ideal on our planet. Romanticism of Delacroix. And the world of Delacroix was Let another chemical genius come, and humanity will more declamatory and narrower than the Neoclassical world of follow him as a new world view, a new light in life.

David and Ingres. I don't want to go on. . . . I don't pretend in these few words to reveal to you the After Impressionism came the Cubist world, which led us various other values of our history. into the geometrical underground of things. Afterward, But those who think this chemistry can be found abstraction led us into a world of tiny elements and matter. somewhere in scientific laboratories, in a factory, are mistaken;

Thus we see the diapason and the size of the stage growing nor can you learn it in ateliers or from theories. narrower and narrower. Going on, you have the impression that No, it is in us, in our hands, in our souls; it is both inherent you are going toward a constantly progressive shrinking. What in us and the result of education. did happen? Let us see what is authentic in our life-baggage. Not, however, to remain with general meditations, I will

The world belongs to us from the moment we are born, and tell you what I am doing now: I intend to continue the biblical it seems to us that we are prepared for it from the very series planned for a building — not a church, not a museum, beginning of our life. but a place for people seeking this new plastic spiritual content

For about two thousand years, a reservoir of energy has I talked about. It seems to me that there are people among us

nourished us, supported us, given us a certain content in life. seeking it. Perhaps today you, tomorrow — others. . . .

But in the last century, a crack has opened in that reservoir. Though I don't sense in myself any philosophical mission, I

And its elements have begun to fall apart. cannot avoid sensing what currently stifles art and culture, and

God, perspective, color, the Bible, form, lines, traditions, sometimes even life itself. the so-called humanistic theories, love, loyalty, family, school, On the other hand, precisely in a time of constant sapping education, the Prophets, and Christ himself. of religiousness — not to go into the reasons for that — we

Perhaps I was once skeptical? I made pictures topsy-turvy. I must see how the art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries decapitated my characters, cut them to pieces, and in my up to now has been a weak reflection of scientific discoveries.

Texts and Documents 181 whereas, before this period, including the Renaissance, art On the First Day of War

always mirrored the religious spirit or, at least, illustrated the Letter to Di goldene keyt. Ftihlished in Di goldene keyt, no. 60

religiousness of its time. (1967)-

I cannot refrain from saying that art of a scientific nature or

art for enjoyment's sake, like nourishment, is not a living "Would that I were younger, to leave my paintings and brushes, value. Historically, such art may gradually wither. They say and go, fly together with you — with sweet joy to give up my

that a "good" man can be a bad artist. But there is not and last years.

never will be an artist who is not a great and indeed good man. I have always painted pictures where human love floods my

I know that certain people today discredit nature. Atter colors.

Cezanne, Monet, Gauguin, there seems to be no genius who Day and night I dreamed that something would change in

would reflect it. the souls and relationships of people.

Today, it is common to avoid nature as far as possible; this I have always thought that, without human or biblical

looks to me like people who avoid looking into your eyes. I am feelings in your heart, life has no value. Now the Semitic

afraid of it, and turn my gaze away from such people. nations have arisen, jealous of our hard-earned piece of bread, Certain revolutionaries wanted, scientifically, to introduce our burning national ideal, our national soil. They want to

order into the social and economic life of the world. But after a show that, like other nations, they are also anti-Semites. They certain time, these scientific theories are contradicted in part want to choke us as did the Pharoahs of old. But we crossed the by other theories. sea of the ghettos, and our victory was eternalized in the Perhaps the change in the social order, as well as in art, {Passover} Hagada.

would have been more certain if it also emerged from our soul, We now stand before the great world trial of the human

not just from our head. If people read more deeply the writings soul: will all dear visions and ideals of two thousand years of

of the Prophets, they could have found there some keys to life. human world culture be blown away with the wind? Are there no other revolutionary methods aside from those History again puts the torch and sword in our hand, for the

we experienced? world to tremble when it hears our prophetic voice of justice. Is there no other basis for art aside from the decorative art Thousands and thousands of simple people here and

to please, or the experimental art, or ruthless art that wants to everywhere are with you. Only "leaders" with no heart are with

scare others? It is childish to repeat the long-known truth: the our enemies.

world in all its domains will be saved only through love; Perhaps I am of an age to bless you, and, instead of crying,

without love it will gradually decline. to comfort you.

If we could add love to the theoretical and scientific sources I want to hope that the land of the great French Revolution,

I spoke of, their result could have been more valuable and just. the land of Zola, Balzac, Watteau, Cezanne, Baudelaire, It seems to me that, in our atomic epoch, we are Claudel, Peguy, will soon raise its voice to stop the world approaching certain boundaries. What boundaries? But we shame.

don't want to fall into that world abyss. I hope that America with its democracy, the land of

I had to live for many years to see many mistakes in life, Shakespeare, and also the land of Dostoevskii, Moussorgskii —

and to understand that it is easier to climb Mont Blanc than to the land of my birth — will begin to scream that the world

change man. must stop its "manners " and give the people of Israel one

As for art, I often talked about color, which is love. chance — to live free and create freely in its own land.

Joyfully I think about young people among whom we hope Anyway, no one will be able to create freely anymore if the to find a resonance. nations let their consciences go to sleep. The last drop of talent

I think that you too think about the same things. will evaporate and their words will remain hollow.

And I love to dream that it won't be a voice crying in the To let Israel and the Jews be choked — means to kill the wilderness. soul of the whole biblical world. No new "religion" can be created without this drop of the May 1963 heart's blood. And we will see if we are worthy of continuing to live or of being destroyed by the atomic bomb.

My word of consolation is in my eyes, which you cannot see now. And my blessings are embossed in my windows of the

Twelve Tribes, now hidden in Jerusalem. . . .

June 6, 1967

1 82 Text!, and Document!, About the Yiddish Poet Elkhonon Vogler On the Death of Elkhonon Vogler

Published ill iyi go\dtntktyi. ho. 6oil^6/). \iigler { igoy-1969) Published in Di g(jiucriL- Kcyt. rio. 06 < Ip6p). emerged as a poet in Vilna in the ip^os and lived in Paris after World

War II. This was written on the occasion of the publication ofVogler's It may be late or not too late to express my grief at the death of book Spring on the Highway. poor Elkhonon Vogler. Why poor? After all. he was a genuine Yiddish poet, but so lonely among Jews. For hundreds of years in cities and shtetls, on streets and A stranger to others and perhaps even to himself.

squares, in houses and schools, your language has been heard. How many times did I want to make him happy — and I

Sky and clouds, fields and forests have listened to your didn't know how. I tried to make a few drawings for his book

language. and I don't even know if the book appeared. Our fathers and mothers cried their lives out in Yiddish. Everything around him was delayed. He didn't know how In heder, with the rebbe, the flies dashed to the window, to recover. Deep in me lies a thought that he made a mistake: begged, shuddered — when we children repeated Yiddish he didn't go to Israel, at least for a short time — to draw lines. another strength from there.

And you stood at a distance, and saw it all painted and His poetry was without beginning and without end, as

registered it close up. genuine poetry must be (and all that in Vilna — harder in

The world finally perceived that all the cities and shtetls it Paris).

destroyed have remained only in our dreams, paintings, and To whom shall I convey my grief' He had no family of his

songs. own. I send my grief to all of you. Our foes wanted to put a candle at our head as at the head of a dead person; they assumed we would stop singing and painting, we would not even have any more tears to weep.

Our house of wood and bricks is destroyed, but not the

Jewish people. And there is no force in the world that would prevent us from believing in miracles. And you, Yiddish poet and artist, know that new cities and shtetls, new parents, dear and our own, descend to us as from Jacob's Ladder.

As great as your genius — so great is the miracle. As pure

as your paint and your word — so great is your world. And if you weep — they are tears of joy and creation. Our streets of Vitebsk and Vilna arise somewhere else — in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. They arise in our hearts and wherever the Jewish truth, the human truth, lives free. May our spirit be strong and clear, holy as the music of our books, as the look of a child, may we be able to go our own way which has been, from the beginning, both a Jewish and a human way.

Texts and D

Knesset in Jerusalem Published HI Di goldene kc\ c. 110. 66 ( Ip6p).

Published in Di goldene kevT:. no. 66 ( 1969). Dear friend Zalman Shazar,

Over tort}- years ago, I was invited by the French publisher

VoUard to paint motifs of the Bible. Then, I was confused: I You have to be a Shakespeare or a poet of our Bible to be able

didnt know how to begin the work. I was so far trom the to express what I would like to tell vou —

biblical spirit, in a strange land. . . . Fate put you at the head of our biblical land — todav when Fortunately for me, the Mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, humanity wants even less to recognize our spirit and right to appeared before me like a flving angel. He invited me to come life —

to Eretz Israel. Since then, I have grown close to the land and 1 kiss you and wish you and all of Israel happiness — to live

have created on biblical motifs; since then, I am newborn; I through and live to see.

have become a different person. It is difficult for me to explain

it in words. Why? I only know that, since then, I have always Marc Chagall had the desire to express signs of devotion, however and

whenever I can.

I have made many voyages through the land. And even,-

time, it meant an even-greater closeness; and here and there I

left a sign of it.

Finally, I am in the new building of the parliament of Israel

in Jerusalem — the Knesset — on its floor and on its walls; I am in the Knesset with its dear Speaker Kaddish Luz, who has so inspired me.

But it is not for me to talk about myself and my work. My

goal, as 1 said, was to get closer to the land, to the biblical

homeland of the Jewish people, to the land where there is an understanding of life and a right to life — a creation in the spirit of that which hovers over evers* page of the Bible and

hovers here in the air, in the fields, in the sky, and in the souls of the inhabitants. When the world, including our so-called "foes" (who are rather their own foes), understands this; when the world feels this — a new peace will come, as envisaged by

our Prophets. But, in the meantime, the reality is tragic: the

vision of peace is still a mirage.

Art of genius and its luminaries are so rare. . . . People prefer to be content with evil and injustice rather than to clutch onto love.

I pit}- our enemies, who waste their time and their lives on

b)^ways and tr\- to burst through closed doors that are actually

open. The straight road and the key to the doors is love, which

is sown here at ever}- step by our forefathers, by the people who

returned here two thousand years later, from all the ghettos; returned to live with a renewed love and brotherhood with the surrounding Semitic peoples.

From my whole heart, I would call to friend and non-friend,

whose soul is shining, to open their eyes and stretch out a hand

to give content to our short life, elevate our life, and create at the height of the genius of nature. Some may not understand my fragmented words, but

perhaps you will sense the pulse of life throbbing in them and the breath of truth permeating them: that our would-be enemies would reject their weapons of annihilation, for they

destroy first of all their own souls. My voice echoes the voices of my parents and forefathers: the world must listen to the voice of that people who gave content to life — and thereby the world will endow itself with content.

There is no art or creation in a life without love. Love lives

in this land, and even,-thing that comes with love is great and sublime.

Let my work here, whatever it may be, serve as an expression of my soul's devotion to the land — this land of justice and biblical f>eace.

August 1969

1 84 Texts and Documents Poems by Chagall

With the exception of "My Land, " the following poems were translated from the original Yiddish. "Bella" is translatedfrom a manuscript found in theJoseph Opatoshu archive at YIVO (New York City). It has also been published, in Yiddish, in I. E. Ronch. The World of Marc Chagall (Los Angeles, 1967). All others have been published, in

Yiddish, in Di goldene keyt, Tel Aviv, no. 60 (ip6y). Some titles are Chagall's own. others were given by A. Sutzkever.

"And now, in conclusion — since I am among poets — allow me to become a bit of a poet for a moment and read you a few of my poems, which I stray into from time to time. "You must not be amazed that an artist writes poems, for in the past, some artists, very great ones like Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Delacroix, wrote poems and prose, as well as, recently, Gauguin and van Gogh, and, in our time, Picasso and others."

Marc Chagall (from the Joseph Opatoshu archive, YIVO)

Texts and Documents I 185 My Land My Old Home (Autobiographical Poem)

Trcinslatedfrom Russian and Yiddish manuscripts found in the Originally published, simultaneously, in Tsukunft. New York. vol. Sutzkever archive. Chagall noted that the Yiddish is a translation i6. no. 12 (December ip^y). ^^W Literarishe bleter, Warsaw, no. g

from the Russian, but. comparing the two versions, it is difficult to (February 2$. ipjS). Chagalls manuscript for the Tsukunft version is

determine ivhich came first. "Aljy Land' has no rhymes in either in the YIVO archive (New York City). In both the manuscript and language, whereas all of Chagalls other Yiddish poems are rhymed. the Tsukunft version, the strophes of the last two parts are confused,

The title is written on the Russian version, in Chagall's hand, in and two are omitted. This translation is from the Litcrarishe bleter Yiddish. version.

Only that land is mine That lies in my soul. It rings in me — As a native, with no documents, The distant city.

I enter that land. The white churches, The synagogues. The door

It sees my sorrow Is open. The sky is blooming. And loneliness. Life flies on and on. Puts me to sleep And covers me with a fragrance-stone. It yearns in me — The crooked streets, Gardens are bloommg inside me. Gray tombstones on a mountain.

My flowers I invented. Deep lie the pious Jews. My own streets — But there are no houses. In colors and c4aubs. In light and shadow. They have been destroyed since my childhood. My picture stands at a distance.

Their inhabitants stray in the air, I want to cover my heart with it. Seek a dwelling,

They live in my soul. I walk flowing and flaming. The years flash.

That's why I smile sometimes My world comes to me in a dream —

When the sun barely glimmers, I am lost.

Or I cry Like a light rain at night. Don't look for me today, don't look for me tomorrow.

I have run away from myself.

There was a time I will make a grave for myself

When I had two heads. And will melt in tears. When both faces were covered with a film of love

And evaporated like the scent of roses. 11

I imagine I see my father

Now I imagine Lying far away in the earth.

That even when I walk back All night long he prayed.

I walk forward — He threw off all earthly things, Toward high gates, A cold sword slew him. Beyond them, walls are strewn about, Where worn-out thunders sleep. In synagogue, you waited for miracles,

And broken lightning A bitter tear would fall on your beard. From the depths of your heart you cried a word To Abraham and Isaac, to sweet Jacob. Paris 1946

(The date is changed, in Chagall's hand, from ip4y to 1946.) In the sweat of your brow you toiled all your life, The weeping was the weeping of your hands.

Pale and mute, you fed us all — Your children in the poor four walls.

You left me a legacy — Your old, evaporated smell. Your smile flows in all my senses. Your strength moved into me.

My dead mother hovers in the air, Barely breathing, crying alone.

"Where is my son, what is he doing now.

Once I rocked him in his trough. May his path be blessed and pure.

1 86 Texts and Doci/mcnts "In travail I carried him, nursed him, Where are my white flowers He sucked my first strength. From our khi/pa on the roads?

I taught him to say the She'iiui at bedtime, For the first time I came to you,

I led him by the hand mto the world. The whole night I lay with you.

"Where are you now, my son? We put out the moon You're in my memory. And ignited white candles. Deep inside me sleeps a starry night, My love flowed to you Quietly it closed my eyes." And opened your face.

Only bones remained of you. You became a wife to me.

The young beauty is no more. For long years, as sweet as almonds, You lie alone among stones, Your belly gave me a gift — You abandoned me here. A daughter pretty as a new year. Thank you, God from the Ark of the Covenant,

I would have kissed your sand and grass. For that day and in that month.

Like your stone I would have cried.

I would have left my soul to you Ill And crowned you as a queen. Oh, descend, my white cloud And raise me up to you!

My old Rebbe's head is Hying I hear the bells ring down below Toward me with regards: And smoke rises from the houses. "I gave you my Torah, You will not set foot in my home again." My mouth wants to say a word To them, covered in snow. No more my teacher with his brush, no more his little beard. As long as my breath carries me. A robber killed him for two cents. My soul will be with them. A black horse carried him away To the other world through the gate. Did you forget me, my city? Your water flows in my body.

His lamp went out. On your benches, I sat A cloud peeps into his home. And waited for my calling.

Facing it, like a dolt. Stands the church, bolted shut. Where houses stand crooked. And a road leads to the graveyard.

Your Jewish painting in the mud Where a river overflows its banks —

A pig's tail daubed it over — I dreamed my days. My teacher, I'm sorry

I left you long ago. At night an angel flies in the sky. Flashing the roofs with white. Let your name be mentioned, David, He tells me from far away:

My young brother is deceased. He will exalt my name. Left life with no honor

And no one knows where he lies. I sang to you, my people.

Who knows if you like my song. My sisters laugh and cry. A voice rises from my lungs They stand together in the door, And makes me sad and weary. Look for something in the window

And seek happiness forever. I made my paintings from you, The flowers, forests, houses, people.

An old house with no window, Like a wild man, I paint your face

Inside it is dark at night. And day and night, I want to bless you.

I came out first

And stretched out my hand. I painted the bright walls, The klezmers, dancers on the stage.

I see the river, the cool water. With colors blue, red, yellow,

At dusk, I walk to its bank. I adorned them like the Holy Spirit. It flows into me a prayer Singing in calm, in the abyss. You played, sang and frolicked. You played an old king. You walk with your long hair, You played with me and swallowed me. With love, trembling, toward me. It was a jolly caper. You bestow on me a pair of eyes.

And I always want to ask vou: The moon comes over From that land to me, a guest. A red flag waves to me.

I wake up on our street.

Texts and Doaiment$ 1 87 The world there is renewed. I want to eternalize your wish.

Families, close and far, To engrave a new truth. Made a wedding without me. Of life, let art remain — Winds blow from there. The sound of thunder and lightning.

I hear the voices from afar 1937 Of people crowding together in joy.

They possessed a life, liberated With hot rifles and with words.

Oh, crawl out of deep graves. Aunts, uncles, grandfathers. You are free citizens, congratulations!

I am your witness from afar.

You are silent, my homeland. Do you want my heart to break?

Shall I beg on bended knee for my days?

Should a fire boil inside me.

Should I leave you all I have?

I will send you my dreaming blood. My breath will gradually drip like tears. The air will sway blue

And I will lie quietly at the fence.

Are you, my homeland, angry at me?

I am open to you like water in a bottle. Long ago, you hurled me into the distance,

I will come to you to sleep forever And you will cover my grave with ash.

IV My people, poor people, you have no more tears. No cloud walks before us, no star.

Our Moses is dead. He has long been lying in sand.

He brought you to our land and exiled you from it.

Our last prophets are silent, mute. They have shouted out their throats for you. You no longer hear the melody of those songs Flowing from their mouth like a river.

Everyone wants to break your tablets in your heart, Trample your truth and your God. A guilty world wants to sap your strength And leave you a place only in the earth.

They pursue, they beat my people from all sides.

Its crown is falling.

Its Star of David is falling.

Where is its light?

Where is its honor?

My people rends the scarlet sky.

Hurls its exile down to the ground. A lightning burns its old mold.

It runs at it with a sword.

And if you have to be destroyed For old sins of the last Destruction,

In your place, perhaps, another star will rise. Doves will fly out of your eyes.

1 88 Texts and Documents My Tears

My tears fall like stones, Melt and flow into a river, Float like flowers on the water,

Thus I live, my God. Why?

I live and I breathe.

I seek you, I seek. For you are with me And far from me, my God. Why?

I hear no word around me. Roads and forests crisscross.

I begin my day with a smile And wait for you, God. Why?

I bear the cross every day. Pushed and led by the hand. Night grows dark around me. Have you forsaken me, my God? Why?

I am your son. Born on the earth to crawl. You put paint and brush in my hand —

I don't know how to paint You.

Should I paint the earth, the sky, my heart? The cities burning, my brothers fleeing? My eyes in tears.

Where should I run and fly, to whom?

There is someone who gives us life.

There is someone who gives us death — He could have helped me, To make my painting bright with joy.

My hour, my day, my last year.

How sweet is my hot tear.

My heart is silent, waiting.

I see the sun flowing above — Covering my face with red beams.

It promises me consolation:

I shall not shed more tears,

I shall go along with my luck. My hope hidden deep inside me.

And hear your distant call.

Texts and Documents 1 89 In Lisbon Before Departure

A wall grows up between us, A mountain covered with grass and graves, The hand that creates paintings and books Has separated us.

Have you ever seen my face — In the middle of the street, a face with no body?

There is no one who knows him, And his call sinks into an abyss.

I sought my star among you,

I sought the far end of your world,

I wanted to grow stronger with you,

But you fled in fear.

How shall I tell you my last word, You — when you are lost.

I have no place on earth Togo.

And let the tears dry out. And let the name on my stone be wiped out.

And I, like you, will become a shadow. Melt like smoke.

1941

1 90 Texts and Dncumenta On the Ship

I came ro the sliip, Told you farewell — You took over my earth, The graves on the river.

But you wiped out my grief. Veiled my home from me, Opened a new page for me, Revealed a new land.

Don't leave me adrift in mid-sea. Where hordes of weary brothers, pitiless. Reminded me of my pedigree and my race.

Let my road stretch without menace —

How shall I bless you, my God,

And on what day shall 1 fast?

Texts and Documents I 191 The Vilna Synagogue

The old ihiil, the old street,

I painted them just yesteryear. Now smoke rises there, and ash

And the parokhet is lost.

Where are your Torah scrolls? The lamps, menoras, chandeliers?

The air, generations filled with their breath? It evaporates in the sky.

Trembling, I put the color, The green color of the Ark of the Covenant.

I bowed in tears, Alone in the shi/l — a last witness.

1 92 Texts and Documents Jacob's Ladder

I walk in the world as in a woods.

On my hands and feet do 1 crawl.

Every tree sheds its leaves,

They wake me. 1 am scared.

I paint my world as sleeping in a dream; And when the woods are filled with snow,

My painting is from another world.

But for a long time, I alone stand on it and stand.

I stand and wait tor a miracle to embrace me from afar. To warm my heart and drive out my tremor,

I wait for you to come to me from all sides.

And I shall stand no more, but fly — And rise with you on Jacob's Ladder.

Texts and Documents 1 93 The Painting

It only my sun had shone at night.

I sleep — steeped in colors, In a bed of paintings, Your foot in my mouth Presses me, tortures me.

I wake up m pain Of a new day, with hopes Not yet painted, Not yet daubed with paint.

I run up To my dry brushes, And I'm crucified like Jesus, With nails pounded in the easel.

Am I finished? Is my picture done? Everything shines, flows, runs.

Stop, one more daub. Over there — black paint, Here — red, blue, spread out, Calmed me.

Can you hear me — my dead bed, My dry grass,

My departed love. My new come love,' Listen to me.

I move over your soul, Over your belly —

I drink the calm of your years.

I swallowed your moon. The dream of your innocence, To become your angel. To watch you as before.

I. An allusion to Virginia Haggard.

1 94 Texts and Dncuments Your Call

I do not know if I lived. I don'r l

If I am alive. I watch the sky,

I don't recognize the world.

My body sets toward night. Love, the flowers in paintings — They call me back and forth.

Don't leave my hand without light

When my house is dark.

How will I see your shine in the whiteness?

How will I hear your call

When I remain alone in my bed

And cold and calm is my body.

Texts and Documents 1 95 Bella: On the Fourth Anniversary of her Death

Your white dress swims over you, My flowers untouched, Your stone ghmmers, gets wet,

I get gray as ash. . . .

Today, like yesterday, I ask you: Are you staying here, are you following behind me? See — my steps swathed in tears.

What are you saying to me? I want to listen.

"... As red as our Kh/tpa,

So is our love for our people and our homeland, Go and wake them up with our dream

"How green the fields lie on my body. Every night the stars wink at me. So you will someday return to me."

August i6, 1948

1 96 Texts and Documents For the Slaughtered Artists Until he comes again to engrave New tablets for a new world.

Did I know them all.-' Did I visit The last spark dies out.

Their atelier? Did I see their art The last body vanishes. Close up or from afar? Quiet as before a new deluge.

And now I walk out of myself, out of my years, I stand up and say farewell to you,

I go to their unknown grave. I take the road to the new Temple They call me. They pull me into their grave — And light a candle there Me, the innocent, the guilty. Before your image. They ask me: Where were you?

— I fled 1950

They were led to the baths of death Where they knew the taste of their sweat. Then they saw the light Of their unfinished paintings. They counted the unlived years. Which they cherished and waited tor

To fulfill their dreams — Not slept out to the end, overslept. In their head, they sought and found The nursery where the moon, circled With stars, promised a bright future. The young love in the dark room, in the grass, On mountains, hi valleys, the chiseled fruit. Doused in milk, covered with flowers Promised them paradise. The hands of their mother, her eyes Accompanied them to the train, to the ciistant Fame.

I see: now they drag along in rags. Barefoot on mute roads. The brothers of Israels, Pissarro and Modigliani, our brothers — they are led With ropes by the sons of Diirer, Cranach And Holbein — to death in the crematoria.

How can I, how should I, shed tears? They have been soaked in brine — The salt of my tears.

They were dried out with mockery. Thus I Lose my last hope.

How should I weep.

When every day I heard: They tear the last board off my roof.

When I am too tired to make war

For a piece of earth where I remain,

Where I will later be laid to sleep.

I see the fire, the smoke and the gas Rising to the blue cloud.

Turning it black.

I see the torn-out hair and teeth. They overwhelm me with my rabid Palette.

I stand in the desert before heaps of boots, Clothing, ash and dung, and mumble my Kaddish.

And as I stand — from my paintings The painted David descends to me, Harp in hand. He wants to help me Weep and recite chapters Of Psalms. After him, our Moses descends. He says: Don't fear anyone.

He tells you to lie quietly

Texts and Documents 1 97 To Israel

Should I pray to God, Who led my people to the fire,

Or should I paint Him in image of flame?

Should I get up from my place a new Jew And go fight along with my race?

Should my eyes lament without a halt, So the tears drown in a river?

I won't let my grief approach

When I swim to your shore.

And when my weary foot gropes on the sand —

I shall lead my bride by the hand. For you to see her — the holy bride in the sky,

As I will dream with her our last dream.

1950

1 98 Texts and Documents The Ship

Two thousand years — my Exile,

My land is just a few years old. Young as my son David.

I crawl on my knees with spread-out hands And seek the stars and the Magen-David.

The Prophets swim past me, Moses shines to me from afar.

I have long been enraptured by his beams And by the wind blowing from him.

All those years I counted the tears, Sought you in the sky, on the earth,

Two thousand years have I waited For my heart to calm down and see you.

Like Jacob, I lay sound asleep,

I dreamed a dream: An angel raises me on a ladder, Extinguished souls sing around me.

About the new land Israel, About two thousand years of our Exile, And about David — my son. They sang sweeter than Mozart and Bach

When will you come, my hour,

When I shall go out like a candle.

When will I reach you, my distant one. And when will my rest come?

I don't know it I'm walking,

I don't know who I am,

I don't know where I stand. My head and my soul — where they are.

Look, my dear mother. At your son going down. Look, my dear crown, How quiet and deep my sun sets. i960

Texts and Documents ! 1 99 "

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Charney, Daniel. A yortsendlik aza (Such a decade). New York: Fletcher, Valerie, ed. Crosscurrents of Modernism: Four Latin CYKO, 1943. American Pioneers. Washington, D. C: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. Chipp, Herschel B., with Peter Selz and Joshua C. Taylor. Theories of Modern Art: A So/irce Book by Artists and Critics. Frost, Matthew. "Marc Chagall and the Jewish State Chamber Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1968. Theater." Russian History, vol. 8 (1981), parts 1-2, pp. 90-107.

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. Mikhoels der aktyor (Mikhoels the actor). Moscow: Granovskii, A. "The Yiddish Theater" (in Russian). Zvezda, Der Ernes, 1941. July 31, 1923. Doria, Charles, ed. Russian Samizdat Art. Essays by John E. . "Our Theater" (in Yiddish). Literarishe hleter, April 27, Bowk, Szymon Bojko, Rimma, and Valery Gerlovin. New 1928. York: Willis, Locker and Owens, 1986. Gregor, Joseph, and Rene Fulop-Miller. Das russische Theater Efros, Abram. "Remarks about Art: Chagall, Al'tman, Fal'k" (The Russian theater). Vienna: Amalthea-Verlag, 1927. (in Russian). Noiy piit\ nos. 48-49 (1916), pp. 58-64.

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Milhau, Denis. Chagall et le Theatre (Chagall and the theater). Yiddish Theater). Paris: Les editions polyglottes, 1964. Toulouse: Musee des Augustins, 1967. Shatskich, Alexandra [Aleksandra Shatskikh}. "Chagall and

. "Chagall and the Theater." In G. di San Lazzaro, ed.. Malevich in Vitebsk." In Christoph Vitali, ed.. Marc Chagall:

Homage to Marc Chagall. New York: Tudor Publishing The Russian Years 1906-1922. Company, 1969. . "Marc Chagall and the Theater." In Christoph Vitali, Musee National Message Biblique Marc Chagall Nice: Catalogue des ed.. Marc Chagall: The Russian Years 1906-1922. collections. Nice and Milan: Ministere de la Culture, 1985; Paris: . "When and Where Was Marc Chagall Born?" Editions de la Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 1990. In Christoph Vitali, ed., Marc Chagall: The Russian Years

Nekliudova, M. G. Traditsii i novatorstvo i' rasskom iskusstve 1906-1922. kontsa XlX-nachala XX veka (Tradition and innovation in . "Marc Chagall and Kazimir Malevich" (in Russian). Russian art from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of Shagalovskie dni v Vitehske (special issue oiVit^hichi), July 3—5, the twentieth century). Moscow: Isskustvo, 1991. 1992. Norman, Itzhak, ed. Be-reyshit Ha-Bima: Nahi/m Zeniach meyased . "Aleksandr Romm and his Memoirs of Mark Chagall" Ha-Bima he-hazon u-ve-maas (The birth of HaBima: Nahum (in Russian). Unpublished. Zemach, founder). Jerusalem: Ha-Sifriya ha-Zionit, 1966.

. "Copies of Mark Chagall's Theatrical Sketches in the Orsahnski, B. Teater-shlakhtn (Theater battles). Minsk: 1931. Bakhrushin Museum" (in Russian). Unpublished.

Osborn, Max. "Marc Chagall" (in Russian). Zhar-ptitsa, no. 11 . "Mark Chagall and the Jewish Chamber Theater" (192^3)- (in Russian). Unpublished.

.Jiidische Graphik (Jewish graphic art). Berlin: . "The Theatrical Phenomenon of Mark Chagall" Petropolis, 1923. (in Russian). Unpublished. Pavel, Thomas G. Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Shazar, Zalman. "Homage to Chagall" (in Yiddish). Di goldene University Press, 1986. keyt, no. 60 (1967), pp. 27-33. Payne, Darwin Reid. The Scenographic Imagination. Carbondale Shklovskii, Viktor. "Jewish Luck" (in Russian). In Evreiskoe and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981. shchast'e (Jewish luck). Petrow, Wsewolod, and Alexander Kamenski. Welt der Kunst: Sorlier, Charles, ed. Chagall by Chagall (trans, from the French Vereinigiing Russischer Kiinstler zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts by John Shepley). New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979. (trans, by Hans-Joachin Grimm and Galina Bajeva). Leningrad and Helsinki: Aurora-Kunstverlag, 1991. . Marc Chagall: The Illustrated Books. Paris: Andre Sauret/Michele Trinckvel, 1991. Petrova, Evgeniia, and Jurgen Harten, eds. Pavel Filonov i ego shkola (Pavel Filonov and his school). Cologne: Buchverlag, Spencer, Charles. Leon Bakst. New York: Rizzoli, 1973. 1990. Sutzkever, Abraham. Di fidlroyz (The fiddle-rose). Tel Aviv:

Picon-Vallin, Beatrice. Le Theatre jidf sovie'ticjt/e pendant les annees Di Goldene Keyt, 1974. vingt (The Soviet Jewish Theater in the nineteen-twenties). . Selected Poetry and Prose (trans, by Barbara and Lausanne: La Cite, 1973. Benjamin Harshav). Introduction by Benjamin Harshav. Rischbieter, Henning, ed. Art and the Stage in the Twentieth Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Century (trans, from the German by Michael Bullock). Sweeney, James Johnson. "Art Chronicle: An Interview with Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1978. Marc Chagall." The Partisan Review, no. 11 (Winter 1944), Romm, Aleksandr. "Marc Chagall" (in Russian). Unpublished. pp. 88-93.

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204 BMidgraphy

I During the fifteen years that I worked at the State Tret'iakov

After>vord Gallery, in Moscow, I participated in and witnessed many interesting events, including the visit of Marc Chagall in 1973. Gregory VeUsman As Assistant Director for Technical Services and a member of

the Directorate I was involved in every aspect of the museum's operation.

I was fortunate to work with a group of remarkable people, genuine experts of the old school, such as E. V. Silversvan,

A. N. Svirin, S. I. Bitiutskaia, and others, who spent their entire careers at the museum. They passed down to the next generation those special curatorial skills that helped us to save and preserve great works of art, including Chagall's murals of 1920 for the State Jewish Chamber Theater, in Moscow. Those canvases were kept rolled up and hidden in a storage space in what had once been an old church, adjoining the Tret'iakov building on Tolmachevskii Lane. In 1966, a small group, which

included Director P. I. Lebedev, curator L. I. Romashkova,

restorer A. P. Kovalev, V. M. Volodarskii, and myself, performed the so-called "secret" examination of Chagall's

paintings. Room 45, which directly adjoined the church storeroom, was closed off and we unrolled and spread out the

murals on the floor. I remember what a strong impression they

made on us. I took measurements and then constructed special, large drums on which to roll the oversized murals in order to better preserve them.

While we were examining them, Lebedev mentioned that it would be good to find someone who could read the paintings'

Yiddish inscriptions. I almost jumped up to offer my services.

Although I knew Yiddish, I had concealed this knowledge ever since a certain incident that occurred in the late 1950s during

Khrushchev's "thaw." My brother and I were at the theater in Moscow's Zhuravlev Square, where the Jewish actress Anna Guzik was appearing. In the interval between acts a man sitting two rows in front of us pulled out a newspaper that was either in Hebrew or Yiddish. At that time the presence of a Jewish newspaper in Moscow was so unexpected and so

improbable that we leaned slightly forward just to read its title. This gesture was enough for KGB agents to start

following us. Although it was probably only someone from the Israeli consulate who had opened the newspaper, we were

closely followed for three days and nights. After that I never

revealed that I knew Yiddish. Thus, in 1966 (it was now the

Brezhnev era) I resisted the temptation to read the inscriptions on Chagall's murals for my colleagues. Several months later, after the Arab armies, who were equipped by the Soviets, suffered a crushing defeat in the Six-Day War with Israel, the

Kremlin geared up its propaganda machine in a desperate anti- Zionist campaign. Newspapers, magazines, television, and radio proclaimed the Zionists' subversive activities; numerous books about the threat of Zionism were published and printed in large runs. The tactics were designed to incite anti-Semitism and to put pressure on and demonstrate hostility toward Jews. The Soviets had kept silent about Chagall's existence since he

had left Russia more than fifty years earlier. In the early 1970s,

I came across Chagall's name in one of those contemptible books, among the names of those who had sympathized with

" Israel. He was identified as the "bard of Zionism.

In the spring of 1973, I was summoned to a meeting at the

Ministry of Culture of the USSR, at which I was informed that Chagall himself was coming to Moscow and at which the mounting of some kind of exhibition during his visit was proposed. The head of the Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who was at the meeting, did not conceal his contempt

when Chagall was mentioned. With the exception of its appearance in the anti-Zionist publication discussed above, his

name, it seemed, had actually been forgotten until that time.

Afterword 20 \ -:^'^f^.*ir^M»m

Marc Chagall — surrounded by, from left to right. A. P. Kovalev,

L. I. Romashkoi'a. Gregory Veitsman, V. M. Volodarskii. L. Lifshitz,

and P. I. Lebedev — as he signed Introduction to the Jewish Theater

,;// the State Tret'iakoi' Gallery in 1973. Photo courtesy Gregory Veitsman.

206 Gregory Veitsman On June 5, rooms 17A and 17B were closed off from the rest Vava at their home in St. Paul de Vence. He remembered every

of the museum, and an exhibition of sixty-three of Chagall's single detail about the visit to Moscow. He asked me if I lithographs was hung. No announcement ot the day or time of remembered how Furtseva, the Minister of Culture, repeatedly

his visit to the Tret'iakov had been made, but a crowd gathered asked him not to speak ill of the Soviet Union and the in the side streets around the museum. Three rows of Communist government. With twinkling eyes, he said, "And policemen prevented anyone from approaching Chagall. He, why were they so certain that there was anything bad to say his wife Vava, and Nadia Leger were not brought in through about them?" After a brief pause he continued, "Of course, the main gates but by a service entrance. They came up to the they destroyed such a rich, beautiful Jewish culture." Director's study on the second floor for a champagne toast and Perestroika and the fall of the Soviet empire were yet to come.

then walked through the library to rooms 17A and 17B. Chagall I know how happy Chagall would have been to see the murals

went first, escorted by Minister of Culture E. A. Furtseva, exhibited in New York. Director Lebedev, and several other officials. With 'Vava

holding my arm, she and I followed a few steps behind. 1 was —Translated, from the Russian, by Judith Vowles observing Chagall, who was smartly dressed and looked magnificent. He seemed quite happy and excited and was

cordial to all. "We went upstairs to the Repin room and then to the galleries where the lithographs were displayed. They were not even framed but under glass in cases that had been slapped together for the occasion. The entire viewing lasted only a very

short time. It was packed with KGB agents; there were no members of the press present except for the Paris-Match correspondent, at Chagall's personal request. The sculptor

I. M. Chaikov pushed his way through the crowd to me and started lamenting how quickly the years had flown by. He recalled the time of his youth when he and Chagall had worked and exhibited together in Berlin. We were waiting for the viewing to end when Chagall came over; a museum photographer captured the touching meeting of the two former

students as I stood between them. When Chagall came to the

museum again on June 8 to see the GOSEKT panels, I handed him the photograph, which he kindly signed with the date,

"8/6 1973, " his name, "Chagall," in French, and the place, "Moscow," in Russian. On this second visit, Chagall seemed more at ease. The moment we entered room 21 (the Valentin Serov room), where all of Chagall's huge murals for the Jewish Theater were unrolled on the floor, he grew quiet; I saw delight and astonishment in his face. We — there were only a few people in the room — stood to one side while Chagall walked back and forth beside the painted canvases spread out on the floor, the works that he had created more than a half-century before. His eyes shone, and he was silent for a few minutes before saying something quietly to himself. Then he drew himself up proudly as if to communicate, "Look, / created this." He started to say something about how nice it would be to exhibit

the murals, and that he was glad they were still together and

had been so well preserved. After a short discussion it was decided he should sign the murals. Brushes and paint were brought in, along with a chair. Chagall sat down, laid a corner of a canvas on a drum, and began to sign them, not knowing which language it would be best to use, but finally deciding on Russian. Vava called to him from the other end of the room. Chagall, engrossed in his beloved murals, did not even hear, although he did say something to her like, "What a good artist

I am." And then he began dreaming aloud about exhibiting them, displaying them there at the museum, in Russia. While glancing at Lebedev, who was maintaining a careful official expression, and then at one KGB agent and another

KGB agent, I remembered the words in that anti-Zionist book

calling Chagall the "bard of Zionism. " Indeed, the time when the murals for the Jewish Theater could be exhibited was distant. The day after the departure of Chagall, who was hurrying back to France for the opening of the museum dedicated to him, we were obliged to take down everything connected with

him and hide it in the storeroom once again.

Many years later, in the early 1980s, I spoke with Marc and

Aftenivrd \ 20 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Honorary Trustees in Perpetuity Solomon R. Guggenheim Justin K. Thannhauser Peggy Guggenheim President Peter Lawson-Johnston

Vice-Presidents The Right Honorable Earl Castle Stewart Wendy L-J. McNeil Robert M. Gardiner

Director Thomas Krens

Trustees The Right Honorable Earl Castle Stewart Mary Sharp Cronson Elaine Dannheisser Michel A. David-Weill Carlo De Benedetti The Honorable Gianni De Michelis Robin Chandler Duke Robert M. Gardiner Jacques Hachuel Moreno Rainer Heubach Barbara Jonas Thomas Krens Peter Lawson-Johnston

Arthur Levitt, Jr. Wendy L-J. McNeil Edward H. Meyer Michael M. Rea Denise Saul William A. Schreyer James B. Sherwood Raja Sidawi Seymour Slive Peter W. Stroh Stephen C. Swid

Rawleigh Warner, Jr. Jiirgen Weber

Michael F. Wettach Donald M. Wilson William T Ylvisaker Honorary Trustee Claude Pompidou

Trustee, Ex Officio Roberto Tronchetti Provera

Director Emeritus Thomas M. Messer